The Wages of Going On
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: SSHPDM slash. Harry thought he was guarding Snape and Malfoy from the last remnants of the Death Eaters. He didn't know all three of them were going to be kidnapped and cursed with dark bonding magic.
1. No Safer Place

**Title: **The Wages of Going On

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Snape/Harry/Draco

**Rating: **R

**Warnings: **Issues of consent (fuck or die scenario), angst, violence, torture, original character deaths. AU in that Snape is alive after the Battle of Hogwarts.

**Summary: **Harry thought he was guarding Snape and Malfoy from the last of the escaped Death Eaters. It wasn't supposed to end up with them _all _getting kidnapped and being cursed with Dark magic instead.

**Author's Notes: **Written for a prompt by kitty_fic that asked for this threesome with a fuck-or-die scenario. The title comes from a Tennyson poem called "Wages," and specifically the line "Give her the wages of going on, and not to die."

**The Wages of Going On**

_Chapter One—No Safer Place_

"There's no safer place in Britain," Kingsley had assured Harry after giving over the key to the wards on the safehouse.

Harry spat blood, felt with his tongue for broken teeth, and wondered what Kingsley would say if he could see them now.

Not that anyone else was ever likely to see them again, Harry had already decided. There was just too much against it. Rodolphus and Rabastan had reasons to hate all three of them: Snape for being a traitor, Malfoy for daring to survive and be free when just about all other Death Eaters were in prison, and Harry for defeating Voldemort.

The knowledge that he was going to die lay like an alien hand against the back of Harry's neck. Sometimes he could feel his mind racing frantically, thoughts tumbling over each other, but it all seemed to be happening from a distance. There was a center, cold core of him that watched things and noted the glances he got in public functions that weren't adoring, the way that George flinched when Angelina spoke to him sometimes, the way Ginny stared at the table when her mother asked her about dating other people. Harry didn't think he'd had it when he was younger. Maybe it had been born of the war.

Good place for it was here and now, then, in this rough stone cell, hollowed out of a cave, where the Lestranges had cast him.

_You're going to die. _

_Quite possible, _a slightly less cold part of Harry replied to the cold one, and he turned as the door opened. Rabastan had only thrown Harry back in here after the latest torture session a minute or so ago. Harry had assumed that one of the others was up next.

He made no attempt to resist as Rodolphus dragged him to his feet and spat into his face. Let them think he was down and beaten; it was sensible advice from Auror training as well as what the cold part of him whispered. They thought he was overinflated anyway, overhyped, the "Great Chosen One" who was really fragile and weak underneath. If Harry could convince them of that, then he could possibly fool them for long enough to get near and steal a wand.

Maybe. The hatred in Rodolphus's eyes at the moment told Harry nothing about how weak they thought he was.

"Rabastan wanted to just kill you," Rodolphus whispered into Harry's ear. "I was all for that, at first. Why not? You're alive, and my Bellatrix is dead. Why not?"

Harry breathed around the tight grip on his throat, as best he could, and said nothing. Useless to remind Rodolphus that Bellatrix had walked into her own battle, and it hadn't been with Harry. Harry didn't want to give one of the crazy Lestranges the idea to hurt Molly.

Besides, if either Lestrange brother had been sane enough to realize things like that, Harry wouldn't be here right now.

"_Filth_." Rodolphus tossed him away, and Harry rolled on the ground, only using his arms to prevent himself from slamming his head into the door. Trying to protect his body against minor wounds wasn't the point right now. "How a lowly half-blood like you defeated our Lord, I will never know."

Harry said nothing, again, but spat some more blood. The younger him would have pointed out that Voldemort had Muggle heritage, too.

The older him was a little less suicidal. And remembered that he had two people he was supposed to protect, not die and fail.

"But I came up with a better idea than killing you," Rodolphus said, and seized Harry's hair. Harry couldn't resist a yelp as Rodolphus hauled him to his feet; it hurt the exact same way it always had when Aunt Petunia seized his hair to try and cut it. Rodolphus's mouth split open in what Harry had to call a grin because there was no better name for it. "Do you want to hear it?"

Harry spat more blood. Really, having a cut on his upper lip and his gums was more annoying than he'd thought.

"You only defeated our Lord because of the Elder Wand, and the connection that you had to it because of the Malfoy brat," Rodolphus whispered to him. Harry tried to move his head a little, hoping you couldn't catch diseases from someone's spit on your ear. "And you only had _that _connection because Severus let everything go to hell with Dumbledore instead of just killing him from the first. Well. You like to be bound together so much, we'll just _let _you have that."

He dropped Harry back on his feet and transferred his grip to his ear. Harry followed, bending just enough to be sure that the pain didn't cloud his concentration. His eyes darted around as Rodolphus took him through the corridors. It was the first time they hadn't troubled to put a blindfold on him as they led him between room and room. Harry was hoping to find some clue as to where this place was, a clue to get out.

But he saw nothing except more stone tunnels leading away, and the doors of more cells, and more torches. It could have been a buried Death Eater stronghold, or Lestrange Manor, if there was such a thing. Dark and hopeless, and the reek from the tunnels was of ancient dried blood and even more ancient salt.

_Salt? _

Harry stored that information in the back of his mind as Rodolphus let go of his ear, planted his hands in the middle of Harry's spine, and shoved him into a room he hadn't seen before. He still wasn't much good at Occlumency, but his Auror teachers had told him that thinking about other things could often substitute for it.

And he had plenty to think about, right now.

This room was much more brightly lit than the corridors, with not only ordinary torches but ones that burned with _blue _flames on the walls. Harry stared at them, blinking hard, and then understood. The blue flames came from driftwood. The scent of salt did seem to indicate that they were near the ocean.

And then he buried that thought completely as he glanced at the center of the room, and made out the blazing circle of inlaid copper in which his charges lay.

Harry swallowed, but that didn't moisten his throat or give him breath enough to be going on with. Snape was splayed out, his limbs spread-eagled as though the Lestranges had been about to bind him to something but had given up. His black hair intermingled with Malfoy's pale locks, and Malfoy was in the same position stretching away on the other side.

But the circle surrounded both of them, and the circle had that same bright blue glitter that accompanied the driftwood torches.

A shape moved on the far side, and Rabastan stepped out of a tunnel that led in a different direction. He said something that broke off into a long cough, but Rodolphus seemed to understand him perfectly.

"Yes, I think it would work best that way," Rodolphus said, and grinned, a grin with broken teeth of his own when Harry turned to look at him over his shoulder. "He wanted to be the one to _protect _them, didn't he? He always wanted to _protect _everyone. Little baby Potter." He slapped Harry hard enough in the face to make his ears ring. "So now he's going to _hurt _them, and he won't have a choice."

Harry spun towards Rodolphus, kicking him hard in the leg and reaching for his wand. It didn't matter that his head still ached from the slap and blurring visions chased themselves back and forth in front of his eyes, it didn't matter that his breath came sharp and hard, he had the strong suspicion that he had to attack _now _or what happened to him and Snape and Malfoy as a consequence would be death.

Rodolphus stumbled and yelped, but Harry didn't have a chance to snatch his wand. A spell hit him in the back, one that kicked like a Stunner but didn't leave unconsciousness in its wake, only a spreading numbness. Harry sprawled on the floor and saw Rodolphus recover his balance, moving towards him with his leg raised.

"Oh, don't," Rabastan rasped. "I think we should leave his mouth _alone, _or otherwise they can't make such good use of it."

Rodolphus paused, and smiled, and said, "You make sense, brother mine." He kicked Harry in the ribs instead, and then in the stomach, hard enough to drive the breath out of him. Harry was still gasping when Rodolphus paused again, said something in Latin, and kicked Harry across the copper ring.

The blue light glimmering there grabbed at Harry and scorched him. Harry could feel the lightning going into his lungs, the crackling tension probing at his muscles, the way that his arms seized up and began to flail around. But then he was lying in the middle of the circle next to Snape and Malfoy, and it seemed more likely that he was going to suffer from consequences in a little while rather than right away. Even his breathing evened out, and his arms fell back to his sides.

Harry lifted his head and stared at Rodolphus and Rabastan. Rodolphus laughed at him, but Rabastan was the one who came near and began to explain, his words slurred and broken but understandable.

"You interfered in our plans to _properly _punish the traitors behind you, Potter. So we set up a ritual that would have tied them to each other, mind to mind, and forced them to go slowly mad from hearing each other's thoughts."

Harry hoped he kept his face smooth. He thought that was unlikely to work with Snape, and maybe Malfoy, skilled in Occlumency, but he didn't know for sure, and he didn't want to give the Lestrange brothers a chance to rethink their strategy.

"We would have tortured you to death," Rabastan continued genially. "But my brother didn't think that was punishment enough, and of course he's right. So we rolled you through the ritual circle, and now the connection that was forming between Snape and Malfoy has been disrupted. It isn't really big enough to accommodate a third, you know?"

Rodolphus interrupted, eager as a crow. "So the connection will try to bind them together and find a place for you at the same time, and there's really only one way that it can do that."

Rabastan bobbed his head. "I'm _sure _a bright boy like you can figure it out."

Harry's hands tightened, scraping into the stone beneath him despite his resolve to show nothing to these idiots. Yes, he knew. He had heard of similar rituals during Auror training, though mostly used as means of torture by Dark wizards, not anything that anyone would want to practice.

"A lovers' connection is really the only way." Rabastan chuckled like gravel bouncing beneath Muggle wheels. "Well, when I say _lovers, _I mean that they'll try to fuck you apart because they just _know _that things will be better if the obstacle is removed, and the ritual will be trying to find a place for you at the same time. You won't want it, they won't really want it, either, but that's the way it'll have to be. Otherwise your brains will just turn liquid and drip out of your ears." He leered at Harry. "Exciting, isn't it?"

"And meanwhile," Rodolphus said, his voice almost soft in contrast with what his brother had said, "if you did manage to survive the experience, then the bond still won't have a place for you, but won't be able to stop including you, either. Will it squeeze you to death, or compel them to tear you apart? It's quite interesting."

"We'll be back in a few days to see which one it was," Rabastan said, and he laughed again, and turned away.

Harry immediately attacked the edge of the circle. This time, it simply bounced him back into the center, as indifferent as a stone wall, and apparently as strong. Harry turned and attacked it from the side, where he thought it should be weaker, but the same thing happened. Small blisters had formed on his hands, and blood was pounding in his forehead, the same as would have happened if he had started beating his head against the wall of his cell.

_Calm down. Think._

Harry paced in a circle, staring at Snape and Malfoy. They hadn't started to stir yet, but Harry knew it was only a matter of time.

And the magic of the ritual, the one that the Lestranges had first set up and then broken by rolling him into the circle, was stalking in the back of his mind. He could feel it coming closer, crawling on crab claws. His body was tightening beneath the waist with longings and urges he didn't want to think about.

The longings and urges that Malfoy and Snape would feel would be _considerably _more violent.

Harry took a deep breath and did the hardest thing he'd ever done, harder than watching Sirius die or thinking _he'd _die: he sat down and turned his back on his fellow unwilling participants in the ritual, folding his arms on top of his knees instead. He banished everything from his mind except what he knew about rituals like these, and concentrated on that.

Such rituals usually formed a bond that was temporary, and telepathic. The participants could communicate back and forth, sense each other's thoughts. The Ministry had once used it to bind Aurors during confrontations with Dark wizards that were expected to be particularly tricky, but then some Aurors had got trapped and stayed away from the people who were supposed to unbind them for too long.

Left in place for more than a few hours, the bond tried to tie the minds _too _close together, and liquefied them. What it wanted was union, and that was exactly what you couldn't achieve while you had separate personalities. The only people Harry had ever heard surviving bonds run amok like that were twins, who had similarities that the bond would accept as substitutes for a complete sharing of minds.

And although Harry hadn't heard much more than speculation about what would happen if a third person was rolled into the ritual circle during an attempt to establish one of those bonds, he suspected the Lestranges were right. The original bond was supposed to be between two people; it couldn't just tie a third one in. But it would seek some other means of union, mindlessly attempting to meld them.

That it would encourage Snape and Malfoy to rape him was the best guess.

Someone groaned behind him. Harry's eyes shot open before he gave them permission to do so, and then he clenched his hands in front of him and calmed himself down by force of sheer willpower.

He wanted to survive. The idea burned in him, and not just because he had technically failed Snape and Malfoy by not guarding them well enough to prevent this from happening. He wanted to get out of here, and _live. _He hadn't been taken down by Voldemort. He didn't want Death Eaters to have the honor.

And he had just got through Auror training a year ago. Harry thought he might even make a good Auror, in time. The most grudging of his instructors had admitted it. That meant he _had _to live, or it really would be all for nothing.

_How, genius? _

There was a low curse behind him. No words that Harry could make out; he had no idea whether Snape or Malfoy yet knew what had happened. But they were smart, far smarter than Harry in a lot of ways. They would see the ritual circle and feel the urges in their own bodies and figure it out.

So. What they had to do—what _he _had to do, because it was doubtful that Snape and Malfoy would be coherent enough to help him in a little while—was to get through this first round of the bond attempting to destroy him. And then when Malfoy and Snape had spent themselves, Harry had to find some means to keep the bond from screwing their brains out of their ears.

Harry _thought _he might know how to do that. It would involve more concentration and will and magical power than he'd ever applied before.

But what did that matter? Battling Voldemort had taken more _everything _than he'd known he had at the time. And now he was twenty-three, not a child anymore. And he had to use every advantage that he had, whether or not it was an advantage he would _admit _to in polite company outside the ritual circle.

"Potter." The voice was slurred, but recognizable. Snape's.

Harry took a deep breath, and stood. He could be facing his doom behind him. He would certainly be facing a lot of blame, and pain.

But that goal still burned in him, far deeper and hotter than he'd ever felt it before. Maybe this was the sort of ambition the Sorting Hat had seen in him, the reason it had wanted to put him in Slytherin. If Harry had known this was the sort of thing you could want, that his dreams of getting away from the Dursleys and showing them he was smart could count just as much as wanting to have power and money like Malfoy did, he might have let the Hat do it.

"_Potter_." The other voice, sharp and buzzing and commanding. Malfoy's.

_The longer I put it off, the worse it is, _Harry thought, and turned around.


	2. Bargain

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Bargain _

Severus did not know where he was, and he did not understand what he was feeling.

Which meant, as he'd had reason to fear, that Potter had failed, and the Lestrange brothers had taken them.

He turned his head to the side and spat out what felt like a huge wad of thick and congealed fluid, but turned out only to be a little saliva when it emerged onto the floor. He hawked again, and finally managed to bring up the last of what was in his lungs. There was no blood in it.

He did feel something else, though, something that cut through the confusion in his head and body like light through mist. His pulse surged and fluttered as though responding to an imaginary drumbeat, and there was a painful swelling between his legs.

Severus opened his eyes and concentrated. Not an aphrodisiac potion, or he would have recognized the taste in his mouth. Instead, the confusion came from—

He turned his head, and saw the glittering ritual circle, and let his eyes slip shut again.

"Potter," said Draco, and Severus settled back on his heels and turned his head and counted heartbeats, long and loud and sick. He wondered what would happen when he saw them, whether he had been designated victim or rapist in the game that Rabastan and Rodolphus had set in motion. Perhaps both. There were three victims here, after all.

He saw Draco first, crouched on hands and knees, his head hanging down, and blinked. Draco made his pulse speed up, but did not increase the intensity of his desire. It was not what Severus had expected. There was a preexisting tangle of bonds between him and Draco, the Unbreakable Vow and the life-debt that Draco owed him for stepping between him and Death Eaters a few times during the war, that would have made a natural candidate for Rabastan and Rodolphus to try and corrupt.

He followed Draco's gaze to Potter, spitting blood on the floor, his body so still that it looked as if he would spring away and break the ritual circle any second. His hair hung tangled and filthy around his face, and some of his teeth dangled out at the roots, and from the way he stood and the ragged state of his shirt, Severus could already make out blossoming bruises.

It didn't matter. Everything in Severus stood up and screamed in response—some things standing up more literally than others. He pressed his hand between his legs, because he couldn't help himself more than because it soothed anything, and swallowed.

Draco had lunged as though he meant to run at Potter on all fours like a tiger, and then restrained himself with a grip that Severus thought admirable. It was becoming harder to do. The fog had not closed back in, but the terrible clarity that had replaced it had its own problems.

"Explain," Severus said, grateful that a word, and not simple drool, came out.

Potter nodded. "Rabastan and Rodolphus were setting up a ritual that would force your minds closer and closer together, until you went mad and your brains literally turned to liquid trying to live up to it," he said. "Then they decided it would be more fun to toss me into the ritual circle. Now it can't be used for the purpose it _was _being used for. The bond still exists, but it's trying to stretch around three people instead of two. It'll force us closer and closer together in body, and then, after you've raped me, it'll go back to trying to bind your brains, only it'll affect us all together this time."

Draco moaned, softly. Severus understood. After the war, what Draco had come to fear the most was death, the idea that he would lose his life and not be able to use the second chance he had unexpectedly received. Severus did not feel the same attachment to life itself, but to the gift of being able to live free and be able to practice potions as he pleased, he did.

"This is all your fault, Potter," Draco whispered hoarsely. "If you'd kept us safe, the way the Ministry said you were _supposed _to…"

"Shut up and listen."

Draco did, although Severus saw the way his eyes flickered and knew he was as surprised as Severus about the fact. Maybe his own desire was making it harder to talk. Severus saw the way Draco's fingers dug into the stone, and the way his gaze traveled up and down Potter's body.

Because he was doing the same thing, thinking about the way Potter might be made to bleed more, and from more places, and the way he might be _made _to submit. Never any thoughts that Severus had thought, or wanted to think, but they were there, forcing their way in, clamoring, shouting, stalking.

"I think that it's best to get the first part of this done and over with." Potter grimaced as he spoke, but all Severus could think was how attractive his lips were when they curled that particular way. "If we do, there'll be a brief reprieve because physical unity, of a sort, will have happened." He looked as if he wanted to spit again, but he kept pushing on, speaking so steadily that Severus was impressed in spite of himself. "And there's something about me that Rabastan and Rodolphus forgot. Or maybe they never knew, I don't know. I think I can use it to break us free of this circle."

"What is that?" Severus stood up and walked a step closer. He could not _help _it, he argued with his own horror and disgust a moment later. A physical rope extending from Potter's groin to his would not have been stronger.

Potter looked straight at Severus, not flinching. His eyes were a darker shade than Severus had ever seen them, and not wild—not with lust, anyway, as Draco's were becoming. They were wild with determination. Potter wanted to survive, and that might help Severus do so. "My Parseltongue. It might be able to disrupt the ritual."

"Why not use it now?" Draco gasped the words. He was on his feet, body inclined back from Potter, but feet slowly skidding forwards. "There's no reason not to use it now! Unless you secretly want us to fuck you, or something."

"Because I don't use it often, and I would need several minutes to concentrate." Potter tossed his hair out of his eyes and wiped his bloody mouth. "And you're not going to give them to me, are you?"

Part of Severus's brain said, _That makes no sense, he would have had the time before we woke up—_

But the rest of him accepted the challenge in those words, accepted them as though he had been waiting for them for years, and he stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around Potter's waist. "No," he whispered into Potter's ear. "No, we are not."

Potter shut his eyes and tilted his head back, and Severus kissed him, for the moment neither knowing nor caring where Draco was.

The kiss turned savage sooner than Severus had thought it would, his tongue twisting out of his control, his teeth biting whether or not he wanted them to. His hands slid down Potter's waist to his arse and seized enough skin and flesh that Potter hissed. Severus shuddered. He knew it was not Parseltongue, but that did not matter.

And then Draco was shoving at Severus from the right, and his thoughts seemed to flicker and dance and jump in Severus's mind, like a distant wireless he could catch a whisper of. _Mine, mine, he's mine too._

Severus fell back a step and let Draco have his turn, although it was difficult. He satisfied himself with noting that Draco kept his hands above Potter's arse and gripped the middle of his back instead, until Potter winced. Draco must be making the bruises that the Lestranges had inflicted on Potter worse.

Severus's common sense, his hatred, his anger, were wisping away in the wind before the insistent pressure of the ritual, or changing. Now he knew that he might miss his chance with Potter unless he took him now, and his hatred burned like lust, and his anger surged as he remembered how Potter had defied him as a boy and failed to guard him and Draco from this fate. Severus had thought he would always get away with it. Potter was a hero, as Albus had said to Severus more than once, and then a sacrifice. He certainly would have got away with his defiance if either he or Severus had died during the war.

The roaring storm rose in Severus's head, and the last truly coherent thought he could say he experienced was, _I would not have chosen this, but I am going to enjoy it._

* * *

Draco wanted to conquer Potter.

He would have said that he wanted to destroy him, once. He wanted Potter to pay attention to him, and then he wanted to turn away and wave a hand and _devastate _Potter with his lack of attention, the way that Potter had devastated him once. It would have been wonderful. It was something he had dreamed of until he woke up hard with wanting it, in a way different than any other desire.

But now he didn't want that. Because to make the fantasy complete would mean he had to leave Potter alone and go away, and _that was not happening._

He waited until Severus had had enough of kissing Potter for the moment, and then flung himself on him again. Potter grunted as he went down on the floor. There was blood on his teeth, and Draco caught his breath. _Did I put that there? God, I hope I put that there._

He bit Potter's neck, and Potter arched beneath him and gasped. The breathlessness of the sound went straight to Draco's groin, and he rolled Potter over and tore off his trousers, then his pants. The Lestranges must already have done some of that, to judge by the ragged state of his clothing, but Draco dared to hope they hadn't done _this_.

"Ever done this before, Potty?" he whispered into Potter's ear. "Ever had someone utterly _take _you, and not care?"

Potter's shoulders tensed, but Draco slammed him back to the ground before he could even think about getting up. He was fumbling for his own trousers, panting hoarsely, when Severus's hand clamped onto his and held them in place.

Draco glared up at him. If Severus thought that he was going to stop this, going to make Draco reconsider, then he was mad. Draco could see the way Severus kissed Potter, looked at him, and he wanted this with the same intensity Draco did.

"No," Severus whispered. "If you simply plunge into him and tear him, then there will be blood."

"So what?" Draco had never thought Severus the kind of person to care about that. He would have seen and done worse things in his Death Eater days than shed blood.

"I do not want that," Severus said simply, and knelt beside Potter, who still lay face-down on the floor. He gripped Potter's chin and turned it. Draco licked his lips. He could see the appeal of that, actually, the way he had been able to see it in the blood on Potter's teeth.

"You are not going to just lie here," Severus told Potter. "You are not the innocent martyr, and you are not the hero."

Potter only blinked at him. Draco wondered why. Where were the panting whimpers about how he'd never asked for this, and they would regret it later? Even knowing that they had no _choice _about fucking him, Draco expected that, because Potter thought the world was fair, and this wasn't fair.

"You are going to _feel_," Severus said, and kissed him again, the way Draco had, but deeper, thrusting his tongue in until Potter choked.

Draco reached under Potter's hips, since Severus seemed to be occupied with his mouth, and gripped Potter's cock. It was hard, and Draco smirked. He ran his fingers up and down, and he finally got an arch and a shudder out of Potter, a sigh that seemed to originate from somewhere at the bottom of his lungs.

"It's affecting you, too, isn't it?" Draco whispered to Potter, although he could hardly answer with the way Severus was thrusting his head back with the force of his kiss. "It's making you want this, when you never would?"

Potter moved his head in a nod. Draco pinched his cock, and a moan came out around Severus's thrusting tongue.

_Good_.

Severus was right. They could satisfy their urges, but that wouldn't make up for feeling them in the first place, for Potter doing what he'd done. It might let Draco dominate Potter, but it wouldn't let him win, or _conquer, _the way that he now felt he _needed _to.

He tore open Potter's trousers this time, and gathered up his arse in both hands. There were some bruises on it, probably from where he'd fallen, but it was firm, and it was hard with enough muscle that Draco could claw at it. Potter grunted and glanced back once at Draco before Severus turned his head again.

"Here," Severus said harshly, and thrust two fingers at Potter. "I dislike blood, but we have little other choice."

Potter promptly opened his mouth and _let the fingers in. _This time Draco was the one who moaned, and Severus was the one who glanced at him, his eyes having dark sparks in them that Draco would have been terrified to see ordinarily. Now, this was the kind of sight that belonged in this circle.

"Yes," Severus whispered. "Willing is always better." He leaned in and began to murmur soft words into Potter's ears. Draco no longer cared about making them out.

Draco moved back to Potter's arse and spat on his own fingers. Then he pulled Potter's cheeks apart and began to move his hand in.

Potter bucked this time, but he didn't move his hands back. He dug them into the floor instead, into the gritty stone, and arched his back in acceptance of what Draco was taking.

Draco laughed, and the sound bubbled and rang in the chamber as though there were a thousand people laughing with him. He didn't care. This was _beyond _anything he had envisioned. This was _gorgeous. _Potter participating in what was being done to him, wanting it, drawing them both deeper in with his mouth and his arse.

For this, Draco could wait a little.

* * *

Snape was talking to him, a constant stream of words, probably more words than Harry had ever heard from him in a detention, pouring them out, while his fingers kept working in and out of Harry's mouth as though he wanted to pierce through Harry's tongue. Harry just kept sucking. Too much pain, and he wouldn't be able to do what he planned to do.

Yeah, Parseltongue might work on the ritual, in some way. But Harry doubted it. He was still going on the information he had learned about rituals in Auror training, but that was all he _did _have to go on, so it would have to suffice.

He closed his eyes as Malfoy worked his arse open. No, this had never happened before. No one had ever done this to him before.

That was the point.

He focused as hard as he could, so hard that the words Snape was murmuring to him became inaudible and the fingers in his arse faded, on what he wanted. On the fact that they were taking his virginity from him, on the fact that that had been a prime sacrifice in ritual ever since magic began.

On the fact that it would bind him, Snape, and Malfoy together in a way, unite them, tie them together. The way the original bond had wanted.

He thought he felt a faint buzz in his head, as though the bond was taking an interest, loosening a little. He gasped, and Snape's fingers pulled out.

"Stay there."

Harry started and opened his eyes. Snape had moved around behind his arse with Malfoy. Harry didn't turn to look. He didn't think this would be made better by _looking_. He kept his hands beneath him, his arse arched, his legs splayed. Snape and Malfoy were talking to each other, but he didn't listen to that, either. Or to his hard cock, which had its own ideas about what it wanted to go on.

He focused on the bond, and threw everything he could at it. All the will, all the fierce desire that he had ever had when cramped into a little cupboard, and the yelling had dimmed around him and left only the core of life that was _him_.

He was going to make it. He was determined to make it. He was not going to succumb merely to the lure of the fucking, the way it seemed Snape and Malfoy already had, and he was not going to think that everything would be finished by the fucking.

He was going to concentrate on the bond. He was going to _will _it to accept his virginity as the only price it would demand, the only thing that need tie them together, and that would be enough.

Because _it would_.

He concentrated so hard that the entrance of Snape's cock into his body came as entirely a surprise, and he gasped and jolted.

The buzz of the bond in the back of his head intensified, even as Snape bent over, near his ear again, and hissed, "If you think you can escape into your silence, you should know that Draco will have you after me."

_And he'll fuck me harder than you will? _But that was the kind of thing there was no point in saying. Besides, Harry was back to concentrating on the bond, forcing himself now to feel the pain. It was painful, no matter the spit easing the entrance. Of course it would be. And there were no protective spells or cleansing charms, since no one had a wand.

Harry fought himself back into his body, though, and felt the sensation of splitting apart, the aching in his arse, the pain as Snape rode him. This was what it was like to have your virginity taken. He was paying the price.

He was going to pay it to both of them. He told the bond to pay attention to that, focused on the buzz in the back of his head and the random surges of desire that seemed to pass through his body straight to his cock and united the sensation as closely as he could with the sensation of being rocked into, and even the way that Malfoy had caught and was holding his hands as though he thought Harry would try to get away if he could.

This was all part of it. This was what the bond wanted, union, coming closer to them.

The buzz grew in intensity, and Harry took a harsh swallow of air. He thought it was going to work, that the bond would take this kind of union as enough and relax enough to let them out of the circle.

That was the point he'd got to when Malfoy rather roughly disrupted his concentration by pulling his head back, nearly snapping his neck, and kissing him.

* * *

It was warm and tight and wonderful, and more wonderful because the spit easing his way hadn't been enough.

Severus could admit that to himself. The desire inside him was sharp and glass-like, cutting him when he touched it. So he might as well spread the pain around, and he fitted his hands into the bruises along Potter's spine and pressed down.

Potter hissed in response. Severus looked up to find out why he wasn't getting more of a reaction, like a yell, and discovered that Potter's mouth was full of Draco's tongue.

Severus smiled. He enjoyed, too, the angle that Draco was holding Potter's head at, the way his tongue delved and dipped into Potter's mouth, the way his lips moved so that Potter had no chance to turn elsewhere. He'd been rather cooperative so far, but that could change any more. Draco was the one to show Potter that his choice wasn't really a choice, that _they _were the ones in command here, and he couldn't flee.

"There is no escape," Severus whispered. He couldn't remember what he'd been saying before, and really, it didn't matter, not when every thrust forwards was punctuated by warmth and the sensation of someone holding onto his cock as though they were going to hold it forever. Rocking back out was wonderful, too, the dragging sensation. "You cannot—cannot—hold back from us."

Potter's eyes rolled towards him, and then closed. Severus came on the overwhelming nature of that look, the way Potter had gazed at him, and _yielded. _Yielding was what he had wanted from Potter, he realized as he collapsed over his back, panting, his skin soaked with fluid. For Potter to admit that he was right about the detentions, that he had given more than enough years of his life to protecting and providing for Potter. For Potter to stay within boundaries because he respected Severus, or was afraid of him.

To be sure, this was rather different than wishing Potter obeyed the rules of a classroom. But it was similar enough that Severus understood both the pleasure that rushed through his bones and the source of the deep satisfaction behind the pleasure.

"My turn."

Draco was shoving at Severus's shoulders, and his thoughts jigged and blurred in the distance, although for some reason Severus thought he could read them less well than before. That was the opposite of what it should have been with such a powerful bond, but Severus was not about to question their good fortune. He rolled over to the side and let his legs fall back, groaning as his cock came out.

Draco pressed up to Potter's arse, murmuring something, and pinching Potter's cheeks before he dived in. Potter dropped his chin to the floor, his hands digging in again. Severus heard a fingernail break.

He crawled his way around to Potter's head, and lifted it up by his chin again. Potter stared at him, dazed. Severus frowned a little. There was still something missing, something that made him wonder what Potter felt.

"You know that we are fucking you?" he whispered, and slid his hand beneath Potter's body, aiming for his cock. He'd thought it hard originally. If it was now, then perhaps Potter was still moving with them, participating with them, because he couldn't do anything else.

* * *

It was harder to focus now, with his arse so draped and wet and Malfoy pushing in where Snape had been, uttering hard, filthy words that would probably hurt Harry if he paid attention to them, if he believed in them.

But Harry could feel the bond's buzz, and it had softened. It no longer wrapped around his head and pressed as if it could force the bones of his skull into a different shape. It had retreated, too, and was a gentler sound in the distance. Harry didn't know if he had deceived it or promised it something it would accept, but he was willing to believe that it would wait to see what happened.

And then Snape came along with that ridiculous question about them fucking him, and reached down to his erection like Madam Pomfrey checking for a fever.

Harry couldn't help it. He snickered once, and then the laughter came out. He ducked his head and buried it between his arms, laughing and laughing.

At least, until Snape's fingers curled around his erection and pulled, hard enough that the pain overwhelmed the pleasure. Then Harry's head flew back and he gasped, and his fingers curled in the middle of the stone, and he knew that he would probably have fingernails all jagged and torn when he got out of this. If he got out of this.

Maybe the bond had been protecting him in some way, or his concentration had. Because now he wasn't just thinking about being in his body as his virginity was taken, he was _in _his body, the sweat sliding down the middle of his back and his knees bleeding as Malfoy's thrusts slid his body across the floor and his teeth aching as Snape kissed him again, and his neck _hurting_ as Snape twisted him around, throwing him to the floor.

"Yes, you are," Snape whispered, which probably only made sense in the private Snape-world that Harry would never share, and then his hand came down and squeezed and stroked, even as Malfoy groaned at the change in angle and repositioned Harry's legs so that he could go on thrusting.

Harry gasped and panted. Maybe he said some words, too. He could never know. They all broke apart, impaled on Snape's tongue, the instant they emerged. And Snape wouldn't stop kissing him and holding his jaw as though he wanted to measure the words Harry spoke that way, and he wouldn't stop stroking him.

The strokes worked together with the lingering urges the bond had implanted in him, and the thrusts Malfoy was implanting in him now, his cock stroking Harry from the inside. He felt a bubble of heat rise up in his head, and spill out his mouth in an undignified wail as he came. Malfoy came while Harry was still shaking, the pleasure winding through him, so intense that Harry didn't know whether he was feeling good because he'd come or because of the bond or because Malfoy was coming in him.

But he still wanted to live, he didn't want to drown in pleasure and he didn't want to live for the moment, and he reached out towards the bond the instant he caught his breath. _There it is. I'm bound to them. I was never with anyone before, and now I've been with two lovers at once, two people so different from me that they would never have fucked me without you. Isn't that enough?_

There was one buzz that went on so long Harry's teeth ached. And then it faded, and Harry felt the longing that had crowded his stomach fade at the same moment.

Harry closed his eyes and reached out with one hand, towards the edge of the ritual circle and the invisible stone wall that had been there before.

His hand passed through.

Harry gasped deeply enough to make Snape snarl—but then, Harry thought his _breathing _probably made Snape snarl—and rolled over, his legs falling open. He could feel _things _leaking out of him as Malfoy pulled out, but he didn't care. What mattered was that he was free, and he had survived, and the bond wasn't going to kill them.

He pulled himself together as fast as he could, wincing at the stabbing pain in his spine as he started to crawl to his feet. They had to get out of here now, and find their wands. Harry assumed his was somewhere nearby. He held out his hand, and called on it with the last little remnants of his will he hadn't burned up pushing the bond to do what he said.

"What are you doing?" Malfoy surged up beside him with more energy than anyone should have after such a fucking, snatching Harry's hand and staring at it suspiciously.

Harry rolled his eyes, and his wand soared through the air and smacked into his palm. "Summoning my wand," he said. "It's one of the few things I can do without it." He paused and swallowed. God, his voice sounded horrible. Well, he'd been whimpering and probably screaming while they fucked him, and his spine felt as if someone had jabbed a poker up it, and he had swallowed blood. But just now, he didn't care. "_Accio _Snape's and Malfoy's wands!"

For a moment, he worried that the Lestranges had snapped them—it made sense that they hadn't wanted to get rid of Harry's, because it would make for a nice kind of proof that they had him—but then the air trembled, and the ebony and hawthorn wands flew over to him. Harry sighed and tossed them back to their respective owners.

The next thing he did was cast a Cleaning Charm. Sweat stopped inching down his spine, the blood vanished from his mouth, and the _things _he did not want to think about were gone from his arse. Harry tested his balance and nodded. He thought he could walk out of here, and if he could walk he could call for help.

"Can either of you send a Patronus?" he asked, looking around at Snape and Malfoy. "I feel like I'm going to collapse."

But both of them were gaping at him, and neither looked like they were going to be much help. Harry sighed. So he had to do this, too. His one consolation was that after tonight, they were unlikely to want him near them ever again, and so this would be the last thing he needed to do for them.

"_Expecto Patronum!_" he called, focusing on an image of the Auror office he shared with Ron, and how happy he would be to see it again.

The stag leaped into being, cantered around, and stopped, staring at Harry and scraping its hoof. Harry could only imagine that he must look a sight, even to a magical silver animal. He smiled a little grimly and said, "I'm all right, Kingsley, and so are Snape and Malfoy. The Lestranges set up a magical ritual that was meant to destroy us, but we survived it. I'll be bringing Snape and Malfoy in as soon as I can. I'll try to Apparate back to the safehouse. Have people waiting there."

The stag dipped its head the instant he stopped speaking and bounded out the nearest tunnel. Harry turned around to see if there was any way he could cast _Reparo _on his clothes. He didn't fancy arriving in front of Aurors half-naked.

Malfoy seized him and shook him. Harry clenched his teeth to keep from biting his tongue and filling his mouth with blood again.

"_What_?" Harry snapped, tearing himself away as soon as he could. He wavered and almost fell, but Snape cast a spell Harry hadn't heard before, and his legs seemed to stiffen. Harry nodded curtly to Snape and turned back to Malfoy. "I know I didn't keep you safe. I'm sorry. But they'll assign you different guards as soon as they can, and we'll catch Rabastan and Rodolphus."

"I've asked you twice now, and you've acted like you didn't hear me." Malfoy's eyes were so narrow that it was easy to miss how pale his face was, and the fact that he hadn't used his wand yet was because he couldn't stop his hand from shaking. "How did you disrupt the bond? Make it so the ritual would just accept our—our fucking as enough?"

"I told you," Harry said. "I used Parseltongue. The Lestranges didn't know about that, so they didn't plan for it."

"Bollocks," Malfoy snapped. Snape was silent behind Harry, but that didn't prevent Harry from feeling that he agreed with Malfoy. "I would have heard you hissing. I heard _everything _you did during—that." He flushed, but the flush just made him look hectic and sickly, not strong. "You didn't hiss."

"Except when penetrated."

Harry didn't turn to face Snape. It would cause more problems if he did. "All right, fine," he said. He couldn't see that it mattered now. They could hardly despise him more than they did, the Auror who hadn't kept them safe and got them into this situation in the first place. "I told you Parseltongue because it made a good excuse, but I was a virgin. Magical rituals place this huge importance on virginity, and it's used as a sacrifice all the time. I bargained with the bond. I kept concentrating on it and telling it I was a virgin, and that because you were the ones who took it from me, that was enough to tie us together. I kept saying that and willing it and feeling it, and the bond was meant to create a union, so it accepted you taking my virginity as one. It shouldn't come back."

Malfoy now looked ill. Harry wondered whether he usually didn't want to fuck virgins, and then shook his head. It didn't _matter. _Only someone horrible and stupid would tease Malfoy about that at this point, and Harry liked to think he wasn't horrible, although he did sometimes have to acknowledge that he was stupid.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry rubbed his eyes and turned around to face Snape. Malfoy might hate fucking virgins, but Snape would be worse about it, no matter what the reason, because he always was.

"Can we walk as we talk about this?" he asked. "I have no idea where we are, except that we're somewhere near the ocean, and I can't have the Aurors come here. And the Lestranges might come back, and I'm so fucking _tired_." He winced as his voice broke on the last words, but maybe if he gave Snape what he wanted—weakness, a victim—he would agree that they could leave now.

* * *

Severus did not know what to say. He had called for Potter's attention, and he'd got it, but the words that came along with it, and the words that came before it, and the look in his eyes—

They deprived Severus of words.

But it made sense to leave the area before the Lestranges came back, and also that there would be anti-Apparition wards up that made it impossible for them to leave without getting outside. Severus turned and led the way to the nearest of the tunnels. That was the way Potter's Patronus had traveled, and it made sense that it was the shortest route to the outside.

Behind him, Potter limped. Severus imagined for a moment what his arse must look like, and banished the image. For many, many reasons, it was wrong for him to think of it.

His head reeled, clear of the bond. His wand was in his hand again, and his mind circled around what had happened to him and what Potter had confessed.

_A virgin. _Yes, that would make sense to clear the bond from their minds. Virginity was the most powerful sacrifice of all, even when unwillingly given. And Severus did not think Potter's had been exactly that, influence of the bond or no.

_I bargained with the bond._

Potter had said that in the same tone that he'd told them he was a virgin, as if there was just embarrassing truth and nothing extraordinary about it at all.

"For fuck's sake, Potter."

That was Draco. Severus turned around with a scowl. It would be like Potter to insist on the importance of their leaving, and then delay them.

But he saw Draco slinging an arm around Potter's shoulders, and understood. Potter was having trouble walking. His bruises flared through the still ragged clothes he wore. His head lolled now and then, as though the fierce effort of concentrating on and bargaining with the bond had left him all the weaker when it passed.

Severus knew himself well enough to feel the distant pressure of shame behind his teeth, and also the deeper satisfaction when he thought of the reasons _why _Potter had trouble walking. He would never have fucked Potter if he was himself, but that it had happened…

He knew himself too well, perhaps. He understood his own reactions.

And that would not let him hide from the satisfaction that had nothing to do with the sex, and everything to do with the fact that there had finally been a situation that both of them could not escape.

By the time they got to the entrance of the building, Potter had shaken off Draco's hold and was walking on his own, though from his set jaw and glazed eyes, Severus could guess at the effort it took him. If he was fool enough not to admit that effort and ask for help, however, there was little they could do.

Potter did turn once and look back at the building. From the outside, Severus noted, it did not resemble anything dangerous. The entrance was a low-set stone door, leading back into a hill of green turf. It would take a subtle wizard to notice the wards that danced around it, the sensation of lightning in the air that waited for its chance to spring out.

"All right," Potter said at last. "I think I remember enough for Apparition coordinates now." He glanced at Draco. "Can you Apparate on your own, or do you need help?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "You think your beaten-up arse can _help _me?"

"That's not an answer."

Severus frowned. That was a reply that palpably diminished his satisfaction, and it took him a moment to realize why. Potter was not broken by this experience—something Severus would not have wished—but he was not _changed, _either.

Severus knew he had been changed. He could feel the realizations hovering at the edges of his mind, the way the bond had done when it was formed first, waiting for him to notice them and deal with them.

But Potter looked at Draco with the same steel face and still expression he had used when they were fucking, and it seemed that he did not intend to give them anything more.

"No, I don't need help," Draco said, finally, so grudgingly that Severus knew he would have spit out broken teeth more gracefully.

Potter nodded and turned to Severus. "What about you, sir?"

"I am not hurt that badly." Severus studied Potter for a long second, his eyes running up and down the boy's body, and some of the words spilled over in spite of his control. "What about you? Can you Apparate?"

Potter raised one eyebrow. "I've done it with worse injuries than this."

"Then that line about being a virgin was a lie after all?" Draco spoke with a breathless splutter, lurching towards Potter and nearly falling.

"How can it be, when it appeased the bond?" Potter's voice was utterly indifferent.

Draco retreated, his arms folded around himself. "I just meant—you've never had pain in your arse like that before, then."

"No."

"Then you've never Apparated with wounds like that before." Draco hawked for a moment as if he would spit at Potter's feet, but either good sense or the way he caught Severus's eye restrained him from falling to that level, and he looked away, his eyes lowering for a long second.

"Maybe not," Potter said. "But, no offense, I'd rather not have either of you Apparate me right now."

And he vanished while Severus was still thinking what to say to that and Draco was opening his mouth.

Draco caught Severus's gaze again, and blushed violently. He stared at the ground, kicked with his feet at nothing in particular, and finally whispered, "I don't know what to _do_."

"I do not think that there is an accepted code of manners as to what to do in this situation," Severus said calmly. "Right now, we should go back to the safehouse and wait for the Aurors."

"Because you agree with Potter?" Draco looked up into his eyes, the boy seeking guidance, the way he had for the last five years.

"No," Severus said. "Because the Ministry would be reluctant to believe that we were not involved in the Lestrange brothers' plan otherwise, and because we still need protection. The Lestranges did not succeed in killing us, but they are not currently under guard."

Draco immediately agreed, and held out his arm. Severus took it. Draco was the only living person he would trust to Apparate him.

He closed his eyes, and then opened them again. Even the blackness of Apparition was preferable to the visions that filled them right now.


	3. Force of Conviction

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Force of Conviction_

"What was the ritual circle made of?"

"Copper," Harry said, and watched the Healer assigned to talk to him write it down. She was a Healer who often worked for Aurors, and made decisions about what questions to ask and what potions to administer based on her knowledge of Dark magic and what it did to the body. She had decided that he was competent to answer questions right now.

Harry tried to remember her name, but it slid out of his mind.

"And you said it had blue light dancing on the circle?" The Healer looked up at him. She was a square-faced woman with brown eyes. Harry focused on them to keep himself from thinking of anything else. "And blue light on the torches?"

"Blue light from the torches because they were made of driftwood," Harry said. "The dungeons were near the sea. I don't know why the light from the ritual was blue."

The Healer nodded and scribbled something else down. Then she said, "I can cast the diagnostic charms now, and then the charms that will take away the pain in your—in your bottom. I'm sorry for making you wait, but I wanted a complete description of the ritual and a chance to look at what happened to you before I healed you."

Harry nodded and closed his eyes. Luckily, he didn't have to take off his clothes so the Healer could cast the diagnostic charms. Luckily, because they were still near the safehouse, or outside it actually, and Aurors stood around them, talking to Snape and Malfoy, and examining the broken wards so that they could be sure of how Rodolphus and Rabastan had got into the house.

That made Harry roll his head wearily from side to side. He and Snape and Malfoy had been at least two days in the tender loving care of the Lestrangers. Surely that was enough time to figure out what had gone wrong by now? And if it wasn't, then he had to wonder whether it was that the Lestrange brothers were all that skilled, or whether it was just that the particular Aurors working this case were incompetent.

"Some blood and tearing, but not that much," the Healer said. "Maybe the bond eased some of it."

"Yeah, maybe," Harry said. It was the last thing in the world he wanted to talk about.

The Healer's wand swished, and the pain diminished perceptibly. Harry winced. The Healer clucked and swished her wand again, and the pain faded altogether.

"Thanks," Harry said. Now he at least thought he could sit down and go to bed tonight, though it was anyone's idea about whether he would manage to sleep without dreams.

"You're welcome." But the Healer didn't move away, and Harry opened his eyes to find she had come to stand in front of him, her eyes so concerned that he grunted and waited.

"If you want to talk to someone," the Healer said, "I'm here."

Harry didn't sneer, but that was because he had more practice at controlling his expressions than he'd used to have when he first got into Auror training. He nodded. "All right. Thanks," he added, because the Healer probably wouldn't go away until he said it. If he talked about this with anyone, it would be with his friends, not a woman whose name he couldn't even remember.

_If _he talked about this. Harry felt like he was made of ashes, right now. The will he'd directed towards the bond, the way he'd lit himself on fire for it, was all gone. He'd survived, and that was what he wanted.

He thought he needed a few days of sleep before he could safely determine what else he wanted, what he needed.

The Healer moved away, with glances over her shoulder. Harry turned around, ready to Apparate out. Surely he had answered all the questions that anyone could ever need to know about the ritual and the breaking of the wards.

But Kingsley was standing in front of him, his face so dreadfully embarrassed that Harry waved a hand at him. "I don't _care_," he said. "Right now, I want to go home and collapse, not listen to excuses about why they were able to get through the wards."

"That's not what I was going to ask about," Kingsley said, and coughed delicately.

"Then you're going to ask about the bond," Harry said. _Of course he is. _"Fine. It was the same kind of bond that they were trying to use to tie Aurors together, in that experiment that went so wrong. But the Lestrnages rolled me across the ritual circle, and that disrupted the bond and made it try to accommodate three people instead of two. It didn't care about what kind of closeness it was, though. It just wanted closeness. So I used my virginity as a sacrifice to content it. Physical closeness was enough that it didn't demand the telepathy."

Kingsley just looked at him, warm and silent. Harry glared back. He appreciated that Kingsley was trying to offer compassion, sure he did, but the most caring thing he could do at the moment was to move out of the way.

"The bond may not be entirely gone," Kingsley said.

"So you need to keep me in St. Mungo's so you can watch me for signs of returning telepathy?" Harry snorted. "Sorry, but I don't trust Auror guards right now."

Kingsley started. "You can't think—"

"The wards _broke_," Harry said. "Rabastan and Rodolphus didn't hammer them with force until that happened. They didn't happen to know the countercurse. They knew how to tear through the weak points instead. Weak points whose knowledge was restricted to Aurors. Yeah, Kingsley, I know what I think."

Kingsley bowed his head for a second. Then he sighed and said, "Well. If the bond hasn't returned yet, then I don't think an immediate return is likely. Not yet," he added, just in case Harry might have thought he'd escaped. "Why don't you go home and go to bed?"

Harry gave him a smile that made him take a step back. "A brilliant suggestion," he said, and Apparated.

He staggered as he appeared inside his bedroom. Few people knew it, but his bedroom was a little clear space in the midst of his wards. He could Apparate there, and Floo there, and do anything else to make sure that his arrival was swift and safe.

Now, he began to strip off his clothes, his fingers moving with a precision that surprised him, until they sped up and ripped awkwardly at the cloth. He left a trail behind him as he moved into the bathroom. That didn't matter, though.

Nothing mattered except the shower, and the flow of hot water over him, and the way that it didn't sting when it touched his arse.

Harry turned to face it, and then turned his back to it. He leaned against the wall with his braced arms for a second, his head bowed and his eyes shut. Then he jerked his head up and shook it.

He hadn't burned all his will to ashes after all, in the middle of that ritual circle. He only _thought _he had. He had needed this much time to recover and remember what he was.

_Alive._

As long as he was alive, no one was going to destroy him. Not the bond, not the traitor there must be in the Aurors, not the Lestranges, and not Snape and Malfoy. No one was going to master him. No one was going to subdue him.

He smiled a little, aware that his face felt as if it would crack, when he considered what Snape and Malfoy had probably thought as they were fucking him. Had they thought he was broken? That they were taking something away from him that he would never recover?

Harry shrugged as he reached for his shampoo. Really, they had taken something from him that had become a social handicap, a reason for stammering and sweating when he thought about what someone would say if they learned of it. The sacrifice to get them out of a ritual circle was probably the most useful thing his virginity could have done. He walked unburdened now.

And he would _keep doing that, _even if the bond came back or Snape and Malfoy were ridiculous about the consequences.

He was alive. That meant he could do anything else.

* * *

Draco stared around his bedroom for a second. It was large and cold and spectacular. Most of the time, he didn't have a problem climbing under one of the heavy blankets and falling asleep.

But this time, he didn't want to. Not alone.

He turned and sharply left the bedroom, walking down the corridor to the room that the house-elves had given Severus. He knocked. He'd learned the hard way, years ago, about what happened to those who intruded on Severus without proper warning.

This time, he knew Severus had heard him, but there was still a long, weighing silence before Severus grunted and called out, "Come in."

Draco stepped into the room—slightly smaller than his own, hung with dark red drapes that contrasted with the bright lights of the torches on the walls and the candles on the tables—and leaned against door as he locked it behind him.

Severus gave him a measuring glance. He stood, without his robes, in the middle of the room, near one of the bookshelves that held old Potions tomes. His simple shirt and trousers made him look smaller than Draco had thought he was. Of course, he couldn't remember the last time he had seen Severus this undressed.

_As opposed to undress completely._

"What?" Severus asked, when the time had passed by in muffled heartbeats and Draco had said nothing.

Draco took a deep breath. "I don't want to be alone tonight."

"I am not your fuck," Severus said.

Draco flinched, more from the shock of the word on Severus's lips than anything else. "I know that," he said. "I want—I don't want you to touch me. If you don't want to," he added quickly. When the last naked skin he had touched was Potter's, Severus's would be a welcome antidote. "I just want you to talk with me, and make me feel a little less alone."

Severus took a step back and sat down on the bed. "You feel it," he said. "That the bond is not done with, and has not let us go."

"I know," Draco said. "But I thought it was supposed to be telepathic closeness that it wanted, not any other kind."

He flinched when Severus looked at him, but Severus turned his head away again a minute later, exhaling. "That is not exactly what Potter told us," Severus muttered. "He bargained with it. It can be appeased with physical union. And he thought of his virginity as a sacrifice that would make the bond depart. I do not think it was. I think it transformed the bond, made it assume a less dangerous form. Virgin sacrifice was traditionally important in ceremonies of _change. _From mortality to immortality. From weakness to power. But that does not mean the bond has departed."

"You don't think he was lying, then, about being a virgin," Draco muttered.

Severus gave him one of those piercing looks of scorn that had the power to sting even now, long after they had departed Hogwarts. "As he himself said, we would not have left the circle if he had lied."

"He could have done something else," Draco snapped, because there was a twitch at the corner of Severus's eye that he didn't like. "Parseltongue. He talked about that. Instead, he was the one who gave himself to _us_."

"And if he had done it because he wanted to make that sacrifice," Severus said harshly, "what would you have done, Draco? Raped him?"

Draco stared at Severus. "You think that was what we did."

"I asked the question," Severus said. "Why would I ask it as a hypothetical if I believed that it had already happened?"

"But you do," Draco whispered, his stomach twisting. He hadn't wanted to think about his actions except in the context of triumph over Potter, but if Severus had begun to change his mind about that, then Draco would have no choice. "You think—you think we raped him. That's impossible, Severus. I know that you were never that kind of man, even when you were a practicing Death Eater, and neither am I."

"But we have neither of us been under the influence of that kind of magic before," Severus murmured, his voice so deep that Draco wanted to strike back, wanted to do anything that he could to drive that tone away. Severus might convince him, and then—and then—

And then Draco wasn't sure that he could live with himself.

"I don't want to think that," Draco said, voice loud enough to make Severus's little room echo. "We didn't do that. He came and gave himself up to us willingly. And it's not like he didn't get off on that, Severus. You _saw _it. You felt it."

Severus's face darkened, but Draco couldn't be sure if it was because of his words or because of the memories that Draco's words brought back. "Coming does not mean that he derived much pleasure from it," Severus said. "You saw the state of his arse."

Draco reeled again. Severus was not the _kind _of person who said the word "arse." Draco had been his friend for five years now, his student for longer than that, and Severus did not say those words because he had no need to refer to any of the few activities that a grown human being used his arse for.

But Severus turned and looked at him, and Draco looked down. He knew when Severus had begun to think about the kinds of activities that a grown human being used his arse for, he thought. When he was made to perform them.

"You're changing your mind," Draco whispered. "What do you think? That we're guilty of a crime?" He looked up, shaking his head. "But—it was self-defense. The bond would have destroyed us otherwise. You heard Potter, Severus! He was the one who said that."

Severus stayed frozen, looking at him.

"I'm not a rapist," Draco said, his stomach rebelling as it hadn't when he was in the ritual circle itself. "I know myself, and I'm _not_. No matter what anyone says, I'm not—I'm not—"

And then he sank down in the middle of the floor, shuddering, his hands wrapped around his head, as emotions he didn't understand danced and buzzed down the middle of his mind.

* * *

Severus drew breath. It felt like the first time in several minutes he had done so. He shook his head and moved, dropping to one knee beside Draco.

It was good to know that he was not the only one who felt like this. The sick disgust had overwhelmed him perhaps five minutes after the interview with the Aurors, and had only got worse after that.

Every situation since the war, every situation _in _the war, he had rescued himself from. He had survived Nagini's bite because he had had the foresight to see that the Dark Lord liked to turn his snake on his most intimate companions, and had swallowed an essence of powdered bezoar every day for nearly a year. He had survived the storm of criticism after the war because he had secured a Pensieve of Albus's memories before the old man died. He had made his living as a Potions master despite the reluctance of most people to buy from a known criminal by taking assumed names, the undisputed excellence of his skills, and trading on the twisted romance of his name with those customers who _did _find it exciting to acquiring Potions ingredients from someone tainted by the Dark Mark.

He had never owed his life to anyone—except Potter for killing off the Dark Lord, and Severus found that debt easy to live with. It was the same one that all of wizarding Britain owed, and few people seemed to feel the need to pay it. Besides, Potter would never have reached the point where he could save the world if Severus had not protected him and guided him along the path to reach it.

Now, he owed Potter something. He knew that the situation in the ritual circle would have disintegrated, would have fallen in on them like rain, if Potter had not been the one to take control of it. And Potter had been enough in control to bargain all the way through the fucking they'd given him.

_Are you upset that you raped someone, upset that you owe Potter your life, or upset that you're such a poor lover Potter could keep focused through all that? _

Severus swallowed. _Perhaps all three._

"Thinking like this will solve nothing," he told Draco, sharply enough that some of his words must have reached Draco through the tight (ridiculous) hold that he had on his ears. Draco lowered his hands and stared at Severus incredulously. Severus ignored that. "We are rapists. But your anxiety over a word solves nothing, either. What we must do is figure out the effects of the bond, and the effects of living with Potter."

"This bond is going to demand _sharing a house_?" Now Draco looked more revolted with the circumstances than himself.

Severus counted it a victory. He knew what happened to Draco when panic struck him. He had had more than enough chance to see _that _during the war, too. Draco became fixated, and useless. "I did not say that," Severus replied. "I said that we will have to see him again. We will have to speak to him about what happened when the Lestranges broke through the wards. We will have to testify at a trial, perhaps, if Rabastan and Rodolphus are captured. And we will have to have Potter's help if we intend to hunt down the Lestranges and take our revenge for what they did to us."

Draco's mouth twisted in a petulant way. "We don't need _him_."

"Neither of us has the tracking skills of an Auror," Severus pointed out. "I am a good spy, but I am not the dueler that Potter is, and this pursuit is unlikely to require getting close to others and using disguises to charm the truth from them." He paused, his eyes locked on Draco, who kept grimacing as if he had bitten into a pickle unexpectedly. "And while your skills with potions and Dark Arts are impressive, would you have any notion of where to begin the hunt?"

It took a long moment, but Draco _did _see sense. He lowered his gaze and swallowed. "I just—I don't like being beholden to him, Severus."

"I know that very well," Severus replied quietly. "But this is a way of paying back that debt, getting rid of that beholding. If we help him to track the Lestranges down, if they are captured and rotting in Azkaban—or dead—then there will be no debt between us, will there? We will have done something for him that gives him peace of mind, and we will have taken revenge on those who set up the ritual in which we raped him."

Draco flinched, but managed to concentrate. "You think he would accept that as payment of a life-debt?"

"Considering he has never collected on the ones that you owe him form the war," Severus said dryly, "yes."

Draco flushed and spent a moment toying with the hem of his robe. "But how can we help, then?" he demanded. "A moment ago, you were speaking as though there was no way we could do anything at all. Potter's the one who would have to hunt them."

"When we capture the Lestranges," Severus murmured. "Punishing them. I believe that a part of Potter may long for revenge, but he will be too moral to take it. Yet it would mean he never had to worry about them again if we made sure that they—went away before the Aurors could take them into custody."

Draco stared at him. "How did you know that?"

Severus grimaced. "I think that a side-effect of the bond, knowing things about him that we should not know. I also—know—that he did this because he wished to survive. Nothing more and nothing less."

He was less sure of what to make of the enormous mountain of steel that had risen in the back of his mind. Did that represent Potter's determination to survive? It was plausible, but why he should sense that and not something else, Severus did not know. This particular bond called for more research.

Draco slowly nodded, at last. "If there's any way that we can stop—I can stop thinking of myself that way—"

"Perhaps not," Severus said. He would not conceal from Draco that this was as likely to fail as work. Potter might not accept their help at all, which Severus could not blame him for. "But it is a way to begin."

* * *

Harry settled into bed at last, a bed with dry, clean, soft sheets, and no one else around within a hundred miles to throw him into a panic.

He drew the blankets over him and rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.

He knew that Malfoy was tearing himself apart at the moment with confusion. He knew that Snape was making plans that had to do with the Lestranges, but he couldn't pick up anything more specific than that.

How he knew, he refused to question.

He had survived. That was the beginning of everything else.

He drifted off, left again with the thought.

_I can do anything as long as I am alive._

_Including ignoring them._


	4. Instinct Is Not Enough

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Instinct Is Not Enough_

"Auror Potter! What are you doing here?"

Harry turned around slowly, making sure to get maximum threat potential from the way he shuffled the papers in his hands. "Where else should I be?" he asked. "I'm an Auror. As you already said."

His mind was already springing forwards, weighing up what he knew about the junior Auror Jerry Perkins, who stood there gaping at him. Would Perkins be among those who held the secret of the wards, and thus a candidate for the traitor among the Aurors? Harry didn't think he was senior enough, but he knew that some of the people who _were _spoke well of him, and might have decided to bring him in.

Perkins, a pale man with a face that reminded Harry of Percy Weasley's, but a thatch of blond hair and a straggly blond beard instead of red, coughed and recovered himself. "I just meant—we heard something about what you had to go through," he said, lowering his voice. "That torture. Horrible."

Harry smiled pleasantly. He didn't think either Kingsley or the Healer assigned to the Aurors would have betrayed the fact that he'd gone through a bonding ritual, and he knew that Snape and Malfoy wouldn't brag about it, either. So for now, he would take Perkins's ignorance as genuine and use it as a weapon.

"It wasn't any worse than the torture I've been through under any enemies," he said. "They could have used the Cruciatus to drive me mad, you know. It's happened to so many people. But what I endured wasn't enough to break my mind."

Perkins looked at him uneasily. "Of course not, but it must have been bad enough."

_Concealing guilty knowledge? Or just put off by my strange manner? _Harry decided to keep going. Either way, he gained something from acting like this. "It was bad enough. I survived, though. And that's enough, too."

Perkins nodded, and then examined his watch. "I have to get to a meeting with Auror Dandelion," he muttered, and trotted away.

Harry watched him go. For all he knew, Perkins really did have a meeting with Dandelion, his mentor, right at that moment, but it also made a convenient excuse to get away if Perkins had realized the conversation wasn't going the way he wanted it to go.

Harry made a vague motion with one hand, and continued walking the report he'd written on the Lestranges to Kingsley. He wanted to hand-deliver it so that no office gossip would get a look at it, but he also wanted to use his body as a living, breathing message to Kingsley and that bloody concern in his eyes. He'd showed it _again _when Harry had walked out of the Floo this morning and nearly bumped into his boss.

_This didn't destroy me. You don't have to coddle me and treat me like the Glass Auror. Send me out on a case. I survived because I wanted to be a good Auror. Let me prove it._

He was thinking that so hard as he stepped into Kingsley's office that it might actually have shone out through his eyes. Kingsley reached out to take the report, not removing his own eyes from Harry's face.

"You know that you didn't need to come back to work so soon after what happened," he murmured. "Your wounds might not even be healed yet."

Harry took the chair in front of Kingsley's desk, the only one that sat there. It was made of hard, dark wood, so no one would be encouraged to stay so long. Harry saw Kingsley blink, and smiled thinly. _This prove that my arse is well enough for you? Yes, I wasn't that wounded. The Healer took the pain away._

Not all of it, but the mental pain was always the kind that Harry had always been responsible for healing himself, anyway. He leaned forwards and smoothly into the plea he had come to make. "What new case do you have for me?"

"New case?" Kingsley blinked again. Harry knew that some people thought Kingsley was stupid, while he maintained that "slowness" only as a mask to fool them, but this time, he appeared utterly at a loss. "I was counting on you having at least a fortnight off to recover, Harry. Maybe even a month."

Harry slightly shook his head. "What kept me going in the midst of the ritual was the thought that I couldn't die this young, I was just starting to live up to my training as an Auror," he said. That was the truth—or the truth he could tell Kingsley. He had no right to the rest of it. "Let me show you."

Kingsley frowned, and went on frowning. Harry maintained his seat on the chair without effort. If Kingsley thought Harry's supposedly ripped-up arse would start hurting if he kept him here, he was wrong.

"Fine," Kingsley said at last. "I have to admit, there's no one else I can precisely trust with this."

Harry smiled encouragingly.

"I don't want anyone to know there's a traitor in the Aurors." Kingsley glared at him, but Harry only nodded, and Kingsley leaned back, tapping his fingers hard on the edge of his desk. "We just recovered from that latest fiasco with the _Prophet _claiming they had pictures of torture of criminals by our trainees, which of course they couldn't produce when the time came in front of the Wizengamot, and then there are the idiots arguing we should have the power to use the Unforgivables again. I do _not _want any more of this nonsense. We need to have public peace and confidence. And we don't know if there is a traitor, yet."

"You want me to find them," Harry murmured, his heart rising along with the tide of his blood. He would have pursued that investigation on his own if Kingsley hadn't let him, but he preferred being given it as an individual assignment. Now his needs and his methods would join.

"Yes," Kingsley said. "I know that you'll be fair, that you won't…make judgments the way you would if you were on the outside of this case." He met Harry's eyes. "I'm sorry, but I've chosen you primarily because you were tortured by the Lestranges."

"And I'll keep quiet as much to preserve my own secrets as anything else," Harry said. He shook his head a little when he saw the way Kingsley gaped at him. "It's true. I don't resent it. I would have done this on my own if you hadn't appointed me."

Kingsley nodded slowly, eyes still focused on Harry's face as if everything about this was unexpected. "But…you've changed."

_Yes, before I wouldn't have named your motives aloud. _Harry only twitched his face a little. He didn't know exactly what expression he was wearing at the moment, but it must be a certain kind of impressive. "Wouldn't you expect me to, after what happened?"

Kingsley turned pale, and bowed his head. "That's true. I'm sorry, Harry. I wish there was a way to respond to your sacrifice."

Harry shrugged. "You're letting me take this case. That's the best thing you could do. I won't be able to put it behind me until I know for sure who's involved, and why." He stood up. "Let me suggest that you pretend you disapprove of the fact that I'm back. That might encourage someone to slip up, or approach me."

Kingsley stared at him for a second. "You think that someone who betrayed you that way might come and confide in you?"

"It depends on the motives for doing this in the first place," Harry said. "If it was because of money, maybe not. But if they have a grudge against the Ministry, they might think they could trick me into believing this was the Ministry's fault. And there are other reasons, too." He reached up and touched the lightning bolt scar. "I've been approached twice by people who thought that this gave me a sort of _sympathy _with the Death Eaters. Being pursued by a Dark Lord ought to be enough to turn me to the Dark."

Kingsley still looked like he didn't understand, but he nodded, and then straightened up and scowled at Harry. "Well, back to work, then. If you _insist_."

"Yes, sir," Harry said, giving his voice a growl without effort, and turned around and stomped out of the office. The first act of their little play was important to set up, and he would ward off sympathy while acting like he secretly wanted it. There were plenty of people who would fall into that trap. People who wanted to see the Boy-Who-Lived as only human. People who would be indignant for him. People who would be gleeful to see his fall from grace.

And among them, Harry might find his traitor.

* * *

Draco wasn't sure that he could hold up his head, given the weight of the mountain that was forming in the back of it.

He had never known Potter was this _stubborn._ Yeah, he'd survived the Dark Lord, but a lot of that had to do with his friends and circumstances that had helped him, like stealing Draco's wand. Besides, he'd had revenge to seek then, too, and he'd been fighting to survive. You didn't have to be insanely determined if you wanted to live.

On the other hand, a Dark Lord had been chasing Potter down. Maybe the insane determination had entered his mind and just never _left_.

"You feel the steel in him."

Draco started. He'd been sitting in the small dining room that he usually used when he had only one person staying with him, and Severus had entered without his noticing. Severus piled cold meat on his plate from the sideboard and then came and sat opposite Draco. Draco nodded and picked up the plate in front of him, scraping his fork through the melted cheese and eggs left from his breakfast.

"That noise is annoying," Severus said, and passed on to the next subject without giving Draco a chance to either defend himself or apologize. "Yes, you feel the metal in him. I must admit that I do not understand the way this bond works. Most would give us access to the strongest thoughts and emotions that Potter had. Some would convey only emotions, some only words. A few might let memories through, or allow us to communicate directly, to respond to what we experienced through it. But this does not seem to be doing any of those. I can feel Potter's determination, and your guilt." He hesitated, and Draco doubted that he wanted to ask the next question, but he did. "What do you feel from me?"

Draco concentrated. Until this point, the alien sensation of the mountain in the back of his mind had occupied him so much that he hadn't tried to reach out for a separate feeling of Severus.

But it was there when he sought it. Draco sampled it slowly, that alien new part of himself, but it didn't _feel _the way the mountain from Potter did. It wasn't until he applied the sense of taste to it that Draco understood.

"Bitterness," he said. "You taste like horrible tea."

Severus's face reflected so much astonishment that Draco winced and wished he hadn't said anything. Then he swallowed and added, "But I don't know if that's in general or if it's just about the ritual, and I can't blame you for feeling bitter about the ritual."

Severus slowly leaned back in his chair and picked up the first forkful of meat, bringing it to his mouth for a few deliberate bites. Draco waited, eyes fixed on Severus's face, and finally Severus said, "I had not considered that what we were feeling might relate only to the ritual. I should have, however. Guilt is not your essential nature."

Draco smiled tightly back. "Do you know why you feel mine as an emotion, and I experience you as a taste, and we both feel Potter like we were carrying an object around?"

"I do not." Severus's words were even slower than his bites, and he spent a moment tapping his fingers on his knee, something he would never normally do. "But it might help us narrow down what kind of bond this is. We should spend some time in the library." He straightened up. "As soon as we send an owl to Potter telling him that we could help in his search for the Lestranges."

Draco winced. "_Should _we offer that?"

"You agreed with me last night." Severus took another bite of his breakfast. This time, he didn't seem to intend to look away from Draco.

Draco looked down into his plate, and tried to find the answer to his own sudden reluctance. Then he touched that mountain of steel in his mind again, and winced away from it. It wasn't hot; it didn't feel as though Potter was burning from anger. In some ways, that made it worse, because it meant that he wasn't contemplating revenge in the way Severus had suggested. Draco felt as if he had laid his hand on a steel cube instead, or a triangle, given the rising mountain shape.

Potter was determined, and it would happen. Draco knew he would say that if he was asked, staring at them blankly, probably.

_He doesn't think about the cost. He doesn't think about healing. He just wants to go ahead and do it, and that means it's going to get done._

Draco took a deep breath, and said, "Maybe he just wants to be left alone. I think he can get his revenge accomplished by himself, if he wants it. Can't you _feel _how stubborn he is? He won't thank us for taking his opportunity to work away from him."

Severus was staring at him, one knife suspended above the peach on his plate. "No, I do not see. What do you mean by opportunity to work?"

Draco licked his lips and shook his head. He didn't understand enough, he thought. He was used to knowing his own mind, knowing the origin of his thoughts. That meant he knew everything about his reactions, too, or at least enough to be going on with.

And now he couldn't tell whether his knowledge was coming through the bond, or from somewhere else. He _didn't know_. And it was awfully, horribly frustrating.

"I just think that he wants to devote himself to his job, and arrest the Lestranges, and make up for what he sees as his failure that way," Draco said finally. "And he wouldn't thank us for interfering."

"We would need to meet to discuss the bond, if nothing else," Severus said, his voice deepening into that intense cold Draco hated. "And you do not know these things."

"No," Draco said, miserable. He pushed his plate away. "I already ate a full breakfast," he said, when Severus glanced at him. "I'm not hungry."

"I will expect your help writing the letter," Severus said, and turned back to the peach.

Draco didn't reply. He just turned around and trudged up to his room, the bitterness in the back of his mind growing strong enough to taint the inside of his mouth. He hadn't been up in his room ten minutes before he sent for a house-elf to bring him a glass of sweet water, the kind that was flavored with fruit and which he hadn't had since he was a child.

He sat down beside his window, sipping the water and staring unseeing out over the gardens. The taste gradually receded from his mouth, but not his mind.

And the mountain of steel hadn't changed since Draco had first noticed it last night, except to grow higher and higher, and look and feel as if it would fall on Draco's head.

_I don't like this. I don't want this._

But it was going to happen. And Draco would have to go along with and suffer the consequences just like Severus would, whether Potter accepted their help or not.

Not even swishing the water around in his mouth and trying to absorb as much of it through his gums as possible seemed to be helping. Draco set the glass aside.

* * *

"Who is that letter from, mate?"

Harry didn't glance up from his paperwork. He and Kingsley were playing out their "argument" right now as Kingsley grudgingly allowing him to return to work, but keeping him on desk duty. Ron had accepted it, although he seemed to waver back and forth between being glad that Harry would be safer and thinking that Kingsley ought to allow Harry to do whatever he wanted, after the way he had been tortured.

_Tortured. _That was all Ron and Hermione knew about so far, the physical wounds that Harry had taken at the hands of the Lestranges. It was—they would know about the rest. They _had _to know about the rest, Harry thought, because he had to purge the poison from his mind somehow, and they were the only ones he could think of trusting. But he couldn't find the words or the courage to discuss it with them yet.

The will in him burned. He would do it, because it had to be done, and he willed it. But not right now.

"This letter?" Harry finally glanced up to find the owl waiting in front of him. He frowned and reached out slowly. Most people who sent owls to him, instead of memos, were ones he already knew. But this owl was a magnificent black creature with almost orange eyes that he hadn't seen before.

It let him take the letter, despite the mad stare. Harry turned it over, and stared, quite still, for a second, at the Malfoy seal on the back. There was a slight stain on the paper below the seal, which might have come from ink or from a spilled potion.

Harry opened the letter with a little slide of his finger, and looked down at it with a little flick of his eyes.

_Auror Potter,_

_It has occurred to us that the bond is still between us, and that we should meet to discuss it and try to figure out what kind of bond it is, and if there is a way of destroying it. And if you would like revenge on the Lestranges, we might also meet and see if there is a way to achieve it. With your Auror skills and the combination of spy skills and Potions master skills that we represent, there should be a way._

_We are aware that the circumstances are difficult, and thus we will let you set the time and place for the meeting. It should be soon, however. The bond may be one of those which grows worse the longer we are apart._

And it bore both Malfoy and Snape's signatures. Harry tried to think of the last time he had seen them, and couldn't. In fact, he was sure that he had never seen them on the same piece of paper, together.

"Mate? What's wrong? You're shaking. Who was the letter from?"

Harry took a deep breath and lifted his eyes. Ron was looking at him in concern, his hand resting on his wand as though he assumed that he would have to attack an enemy coming out of the envelope. Harry gave him a smile that made Ron wince, and slid the letter carefully back into the envelope.

"Snape and Malfoy," he said, his voice deepening and changing like he thought his smile must have changed, if Ron had reacted like that. _But what about me hasn't changed, since the ritual? _"They wanted to castigate me for failing them because I didn't keep the Lestranges from getting through the wards on the safehouse."

"Those bastards!" Ron looked as though he would be happy right now to keep his wand out and go Apparate to Malfoy Manor or wherever else "those bastards" were. Harry realized that he didn't know, and he doubted that the owl could tell him. "Isn't it enough that _you_ were the one who suffered all the torture? Kingsley said Snape and Malfoy were in bad shape, but not nearly as bad as you were."

"There was something else that happened, something that you should know," Harry said. He realized that he was shaking, or part of him was, buried deep inside. Maybe his voice was, too, and he just hadn't heard it, because Ron paused and looked at him in concern.

"Harry?"

Harry took a deep breath and stood. "I'll tell you about what I come back," he said. "I think you and Hermione are the only ones who can help me deal with it, but—I have to tell both of you at the same time. I don't know if I'll get it out otherwise. Can you please firecall Hermione and tell her to come here? I need to answer this letter right now."

Ron stared at him, but he had always been able to sense when Harry _really _needed him and come back—or do what he was asked. He nodded. "Sure, mate."

Harry slipped down the corridor as if he was being summoned to a superior's office, and ducked into the first empty room he found. Like some of the other empty ones, it was used as a combination of storage for files that were out of the Ministry Archives and that Aurors had been too lazy to return, and interrogation room or holding cell when all the normal ones were filled.

Harry shut and locked the door. He had to pause a moment and recast one of the spells because his hand was shaking so badly.

They _dared_.

He turned to face the letter, feeling the tension melt into looseness. He thought of the morning he had awakened, the first one after the fall of Voldemort, and the sunlight that had come through the windows in Gryffindor Tower. For the first time, he could think that it was the sunlight of a day that didn't have Voldemort lurking somewhere in it, and the world had been wide and bright and endless.

He almost snarled the incantation rather than spoke it, even though the memory was happy enough to let him cast the spell in the first place. "_Expecto Patronum!_"

The stag leaped out of his wand, and circled around the room for a moment in its search for Dementors. Then it turned and stared at him, and scraped a small hoof. Its gaze was bright and dark at the same time, distant, and Harry could feel the desire to help him, in the same back part of his mind where he felt Malfoy brooding and Snape spinning plots.

Harry shook his head, refusing the stag's desire. He would get help from his friends, and in the meantime, he had to do something with this rage, this spitting desire that was almost choking him.

"About your revenge, and the letter you sent me, and whatever else you wanted to discuss," he said, his voice so ugly that it hurt his throat. "_Fuck off_."

The Patronus twitched its ears at him, but when Harry swung a hand out and commanded it to go to Snape and Malfoy, it leaped through the walls and disappeared.

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was more upset than he should be by this. Malfoy and Snape might want to meet, but that was no reason that Harry ever had to see them again. And he wouldn't allow himself to be _summoned _by them, as if he was a pet.

He turned and opened the door, and went to tell Ron and Hermione the truth. Tell people who could help him, not people who would want to blame him for not doing impossible things in the first place.

_I am not a victim. They are not going to make me one._


	5. A Stretched Bond

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five-A Stretched Bond_

"What's this about, Harry?" Hermione stood up as soon as he came back into the office, her hand stretched out as if she could catch his arm and soothe his anxiety that way. "Ron said something about how Snape and Malfoy wrote to you? And they blame you for not keeping them safe?"

Harry winced a little when he saw the depth of the fire in Hermione's eyes. The lie about Snape and Malfoy had been a convenient excuse for why he had to go answer their letter right that instant, but he had to correct this now.

He cast Locking Charms on the door, and then sat down in the chair behind his desk. He had to take a few deep breaths before he could go on, and in that time, Hermione's face had already begun to shift. She knew, Harry thought. Not specifically what it was, but that it was something that had nothing to do with Snape and Malfoy being bastards.

_Well, not like _that.

Ron stood behind Hermione, his face quiet and solemn, although red. He kept his eyes fastened on Harry, and seemed to intend to react based on how Harry did. Harry had to admit he liked that.

"Listen," he said. "The Lestranges tortured me separately from Snape and Malfoy for a while." Hermione's mouth twitched as if she wanted to give him the exact amount of time that had passed on the outside, but she didn't try, for which Harry was grateful. "Then they took me to a room where there was a ritual circle. A copper one, in the floor. They already had Snape and Malfoy inside. They were using this telepathic ritual on them. It would have tried to make them one, but eventually, their brains would have leaked out their ears."

"Literally?" Hermione was pale.

Harry nodded. "Literally."

His tongue tried to stick to the roof of his mouth. Harry unstuck it and continued speaking. He was master here, not his body and the stupid memories it was trying to conjure up. He would do _as he wished. _

"The Lestranges rolled me across the circle and into the middle of the bond as it was forming. That made it change. It had to accommodate three people instead of two. There was no way to escape it, except if we gave a sacrifice to appease it."

Ron had tightened his hand on his wand. Hermione shifted in her seat. "What sacrifice?" Her voice was little more than a breath.

Harry felt a slight surge of shame and embarrassment. He focused on that, in preference to the feelings clambering up his spine and trying to overwhelm his stupid mind. Yes, he should have told his friends about this long since. Not the ritual, but the sacrifice. "My virginity."

They both stared at him, eyes so blank with shock that Harry smiled a little. No, he hadn't been remiss in hiding it, then. No one had known.

He wondered for a second how long he would have gone on hiding it and not having anyone suspect it if Snape and Malfoy hadn't-

The feelings were there, chewing on his thoughts, trying to climb out his mouth. Harry snarled them back, and they shut up. His darkness was deeper than theirs.

"They-" Ron stopped. Harry didn't think it was because he was too squeamish to say anything else. He just didn't know what word to use.

There was part of Harry that loved him for that, and always would. He sat straighter, bracing himself on the love that he had for his friends, and muttered, "Yes. They fucked me. That's the only word that fits."

Ron closed his eyes for a second, and then came around the desk and clasped his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Do you need me to hunt them down?" he asked quietly. "Or was it not that kind of fucking?"

Hermione had one hand to her mouth and looked as if she was about to cry, but she sat up straight when Harry caught her eye and said, "What happened?"

"The bond would have destroyed all of us trying to achieve a mental union." Harry found it easier to tell this part, because he'd already reported as much, in much the same words, to the Healer who had tended him after the ritual, and to Kingsley. "So I gave it a physical one instead. I was bargaining with the bond all through the ritual, telling it that I was willing to let them close and give them something I'd never given anyone. I think it worked. At least, we're not feeling our brains leaking out through our ears yet."

"Is it there?" Hermione had reached out and taken his hand, and seemed to be willing strength into him. "The bond?"

Harry grimaced, then nodded. "I get random little flashes from them, knowledge of what they're thinking about and believing. But that letter this morning..." He couldn't help it, he let his disgust and hatred well up, and Hermione and Ron both tightened their holds. "They want to meet and talk about the bond. They want to help me hunt down the Lestranges, they said."

"And they don't understand that you have no interest in that," Hermione whispered.

Harry half-smiled at her. "I would take them down if they crossed my path. But..." He strengthened the Silencing and Locking Charms on the door, then turned back. "Kingsley thinks there must be a traitor in the Aurors, and I agree. Someone with _specific _information attacked those weak places in the wards on the safehouse. There's nothing else that could have made them look like that, or tear like that."

Hermione looked more ill than ever. Ron just nodded, the corner of his mouth grim. He had probably suspected it before this, Harry thought, and not talked about it because he would assume that Harry was too sensitive about the whole subject of his torture.

"You want the traitor more," Hermione concluded.

Harry nodded. "Snape and Malfoy want revenge on the people who tortured-us. I can't say I blame them. But that's not my focus, and they're not going to make me _into someone responsible to them._"

"Of course not," Ron muttered, roughly. "You shouldn't have to do anything with Snape and Malfoy unless the bond becomes imperative."

"Not even then," Harry said, tensing, and knowing that neither of them would miss it. "Not even then."

"Harry..."

Harry laughed harshly. "No," he said. "You don't understand. I confirmed this by looking it up yesterday. I was the one who made the sacrifice to appease the bond. If there's any penalty from that later on, the bond will focus on _me_. It won't affect Snape and Malfoy. I don't need them, and I _won't _let them-near me again."

"You don't need to let them touch you." Hermione's eyes were so wide and distressed that Harry felt as though he could see through them, all the way to the bottom. They were quivering with tears, and Harry bit his lip to avoid saying something contemptuous. Hermione was only trying to help him, and he would rather have some of her help than none at all. "But you need to meet with them. Talk with them. Do they _know _the bond won't affect them if it turns savage?"

Harry tensed further. He wanted to explode out of this room, away from the friends who should be comforting him and instead were urging him to see those-_them _again.

But he knew he could never outrun most of the demons that were preying on him right now, considering he carried them in his own mind. He subsided back into his own seat with a sigh and said in a clipped voice, "They don't know. But I'm not going to meet with them unless it's imperative. I'll send a letter to them. That's all."

"If the bond draws you towards them?" Hermione's hand trembled in his.

"Fuck, Hermione, whose side are you _on_?" Harry hissed at her, and her face turned paler and she bowed her head.

"Yours," she whispered back. "Only and always yours, Harry, but we need to know how this might manifest. We need to know if something is likely to happen that would mean you have to spend even more time with them. I want to help you break free from them. But-you've been so hurt..." Her hand tightened in his, gave a few jerks as though she was having a seizure. "I don't want to see you get hurt further."

"Me, neither." Ron pressed down heavily on his shoulder, and Harry tensed for a different reason. Ron seemed to sense the difference, and backed off with his hands raised. "Sorry, mate."

Harry sighed and rubbed his forehead. The pain was settling now that he had told someone, as he had thought it might. So that was good, he thought. His breathing settled, too, and he no longer felt as though something else would leap to the forefront of his mind and control his tongue.

"Fine," he said. "I'll send another letter and offer to meet with them _if _they notice something happening with the bond. Nothing else. I don't want their help to hunt the Lestranges."

"'Course not," Ron said, and rubbed Harry's hair, which Harry had to admit brought back fewer memories at the moment than clasping his shoulders did. "You don't need them. You've got us."

Harry smiled at Ron, but shook his head. "Thanks, you lot. But, seriously. What kept me alive was thinking that I'd just _started _my life, my real one, the one I trained to get. I _chose _to be an Auror. I didn't choose to be a hero, or someone who survived the Killing Curse, or an orphan, or-" He thought he controlled the impulse to spit, but Hermione sat a little back out of the way anyway. "A sacrifice. I mean, I chose the way to appease the bond, what to give up. But I didn't choose to be in that situation in the first place."

"I know perfectly what you mean," Hermione told him, quietly, but with such ferocity in her eyes that Harry was sure she understood. "And I think you deserve all the time and peace in the world to recover." She paused. "There's some books I can give you that might help you understand."

"I still don't understand why you don't want revenge on the Lestranges," Ron struck in, while Harry was opening his mouth to react to the offer of books.

Harry shut his mouth and sighed. "Because I want to be a good Auror," he said. "And a good Auror might follow the orders from his superiors, which in this case I'm doing." He caught the quick flash from Ron's eyes, the smothered nod. He now knew Harry was acting the way he was on orders. "But he doesn't go out and seek revenge. What Malfoy and Snape want is their business. They can hunt them down, if they want. I wouldn't exactly shed any tears if I heard that Rodolphus and Rabastan were dead. But _I _would have to arrest them and bring them in, because that's the way justice is done by Aurors. I don't want to get involved in it."

"Did you tell them that?" Hermione asked.

Harry scowled at her.

"I'm sorry," Hermione whispered, and squeezed his hand again. "But I think they won't stay away or stop interfering in your life unless they understand exactly the way you feel. It's like telling them that you'll be the one to take the brunt of the bond if it starts acting up. They would probably be perfectly well-pleased to step back, but they have to know, or they'll fling more letters at you full of insults and accusations."

Harry grimaced. He really had no desire to speak to Snape and Malfoy, even in writing. That would be giving them too much acknowledgement, too much power over him.

But Hermione was right, the way she usually was, and Harry finally rolled his eyes and said, "All right, I'll put that in the letter, too."

"I'll help you write it, if you want," Hermione said quietly.

Harry thought about it, and then nodded. With someone at his side, he was less likely to burst out into angry recriminations than if he was doing it by himself.

_By the book. _That was what he had had to learn when he became an Auror. He could be great at breaking the rules and falling into the solution of a problem by accident. But when he was in Auror training, he had finally learned that he wasn't so great at doing it by himself. He needed Ron and Hermione there with him, and Ron was the only one who had decided that he also wanted to be an Auror.

So there were other ways to do things, and Harry's first instincts weren't always the best answers. Not that he would know that without his friends. He wished the bond could be transferred to them. He would trust _them _with access to his mind and feelings and whatever else the bond might be conveying.

"I'll go to the Ministry archives and find everything I can on bonds," Ron said, hovering behind them.

"Do that," Hermione said, but Ron looked at Harry before he left, and Harry gratefully nodded to him, too. This way, things would get settled, and Ron would have a useful task to perform, which he would like.

Hermione squeezed Harry's hands once more and said, "I hate to ask this, but I have to know. Do you feel like they raped you?"

Harry closed his eyes as he answered. "They did, but I don't want to curl up and cry about it. I don't have _time. _I need to complete this investigation, and I need to make my peace with what happened. I'm busy."

When he opened his eyes, Hermione was just nodding. Harry felt fire leap up in his heart. He still had the steel will and determination that were partially built out of the ashes of what had happened to him, but he had his friends, too. He might not be able to be an Auror with them, but he could accomplish great things with them.

_Just wait and see._

* * *

"Severus? There's a letter."

Severus looked up. He had been attempting to brew, in the lab that Draco always set aside for him when he visited, but it had been no use. His hands were still shaking after the snarl that had come out of Potter's Patronus hours earlier.

It made no _sense. _Severus had seen Potter's Patronus before, most recently a few days ago when Potter had sent it to warn him and Draco that someone had broken into the safehouse and he would try to hold them off. But the Lestranges had overpowered Potter, swarmed up the stairs, and captured them both. Severus should have felt outrage when he saw the silver stag, or the loathing he attributed to all his memories of James, not as though someone had set the earth reeling beneath him.

Now he put his finger in the Potions tome he held and asked, "Who is it from?" He knew Draco would not have brought one of the silly party invitations that he often received or a letter from his parents up to Severus.

Draco pushed the door of the lab the rest of the way open. His face was strange, and the guilt in the back of Severus's head writhed like Nagini as he set the letter on the table next to Severus's abandoned ingredients from this morning. "From Potter."

Severus grunted and turned back to his book. "I have no desire to read it." The mountain of steel in the back of his mind had cast enough shadow over his thoughts for the day.

"But I read it," Draco said. "And Potter is bloody _protecting _us again, Severus. And he says that we can hunt Rodolphus and Rabastan, and he wishes us good luck, but he doesn't want to get involved."

It sounded so much _un_like what Potter would say that Severus turned around and stared. Then he stood and came forwards to touch the letter. Draco stepped out of the way and turned as if admiring the neatly labeled shelves of Potions ingredients along the far wall, although Severus knew that he would not do such a thing in truth. He was trying to give Severus a chance to recover his lost composure.

Not that Severus should have lost it in the first place. Not that he should have been able to tell so much about Draco's motives without Draco telling him.

It might be due to the expanding influence of the bond.

Severus grimaced and continued reading the letter. It contained what Draco had said it did, flowing smoothly from the beginning.

_Snape, Malfoy,_

_I'll write to you together since you sent me a joint letter, and I can sense both of you through the bond without sensing you separately._

_I made the sacrifice for the bond. I was the one who negotiated it. That should mean that any further sacrifice the bond would demand would fall on me. You don't need to worry about it, even if it seems the bond is deepening or expanding. Any urges that you feel to get in contact with me before then are probably just the bond trying to force us together. I have no doubt the bond would like even more union than it's achieved. That doesn't mean we need to give it what it wants._

_It would identify me as the stubborn factor that prevents us from meeting, since you did in fact offer that. So it would attack me. I'll let you know if that happens, and meet with you if it's really necessary. Until then, we don't need to see each other-which I'm sure you'll prefer, and I'd like it that way, too._

_In the meantime, I hope that you'll have good luck with the hunt for the Lestranges. That doesn't mean that I'm going to help you. I would get in trouble if I did that, and I made the sacrifice partially because I was so determined that I would survive and make myself into a good Auror. A good Auror doesn't hunt down and kill criminals because they tortured him. We would all become vigilantes if that happened. _

_I won't stand in your way. I hope you find them, because you can take care of them. I just won't join you for it._

_Harry Potter._

Severus imagined, for a moment, the way Potter might have wrestled with putting "Dear" at the beginning of the letter and "Sincerely" at the end, and then probably decided it was the more honest course simply to leave them off. He tried to feel bitter about that, but he couldn't. It was _true, _all of it. He touched the paper and wiped his fingers back and forth along the top, wondering if Draco was feeling even more bitterness through the bond from him.

"Severus? What do you think?"

Draco had paced back around to face him. Severus looked up, swallowed, and gave his answer. "I think he's right, that the Aurors would not look kindly on him joining us in our hunt."

Draco smiled, and the patch of emotion that represented him in the back of Severus's mind twisted and brightened. "That's what I thought." He paused, and then narrowed his eyes. "What about meeting him? You don't think he's right that the bond would make him pay if it changed, because he's the stubborn one?"

Severus said nothing. He sat down again and put his finger back in the Potions book, but didn't glance at the page. He simply found the position more comfortable as he tried to work out the tangled emotions that filled him concerning Potter.

He wanted to be free of the bond. He did not want to deal with Potter again. Of course it would be best if he could achieve his goal without further contact with the brat.

But-

Potter had already been sacrifice for them twice, if one counted his defeat of the Dark Lord. Was he always to play that role? Would Severus always owe him, without any ability to pay him back?

"I think he is right," Severus said at last. "Whether we want to grant him the privilege of always standing up for us, shielding us, is another matter."

Draco stared at him, jaw dropping open, and the patch of emotion in Severus's mind now shimmered with fleeting stripes of deep grey. "What? _Privilege? _What makes you think-"

"Is not anything to do with us a privilege?" Severus slapped a hand on the book and turned to face Draco. "To guide us, to protect us, to save our lives? Potter did that, and turned away as if we were worth nothing. He now proposes that we are not worthy to stand at his side to meet the bond, should it turn on him."

Draco stared at him again, then took a seat on the far side of the lab. "But I _don't _want to meet the brunt of the bond if it turns on us," he said, simply and clearly. "I really don't want to, Severus."

"Then you need not," Severus said. "But I think Potter is wrong. The bond might be angriest at him for resisting the pull, but if we were simply not there with him, it might also turn on us. I care too much for my own safety and future to put it solely in Potter's hands."

Draco sat still, head bowed. Severus waited. He knew it was harder for Draco. Severus would not have _chosen _to become what he had, a spy and a warrior, but because he had been through the experience, he could think of facing danger more calmly than Draco could. Draco was a coward at bottom, whom the promise of death at the hands of the Lestranges had been enough to scare, even before they began the torture.

Draco lifted his head and said, "I have my pride."

"But," Severus said, waiting.

"I don't want to deal with Potter," Draco said. "I don't want to deal with this bond. If he's right and it starts pulling on us more sharply, then I'll decide what to do then. Until then...I don't want to see him, Severus."

Given the guilt that symbolized him in Severus's mind, that made sense, and Severus could not truly fault him for it. He only nodded and said, "Then I will send him a request to meet with him by myself."

Draco curled his hand sharply in towards his chest. Then he nodded once, stood up, and walked out of the lab.

Severus picked up the letter and read it again. He would have to decide carefully how to respond, especially since Draco would not be joining with him this time.

But satisfaction coiled in the same place where Potter's Patronus had left him brooding. He would do what _had _to be done, and also what should be done, to recover his pride. He had not endured what Potter had in the ritual circle, but he had endured enough.

He would have his own freedom and pride back. It would be done.


	6. A Tense Meeting

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—A Tense Meeting_

"Damn him."

Harry thought the words flat enough that they needed no further discussion, but Ron looked up immediately. He had accompanied Harry home that night. Harry had said that he didn't need the company, and Ron had looked him in the face and said, "Yes, you do," so softly and patiently that Harry had given in.

"What does he want now?" Ron stood up and came over, extending his hand for the letter.

Harry hesitated, but let him have it. He was infuriated enough staring at Snape's words. "He wants to meet with me," he said. "We have to _discuss the bond_. We have to _make sure that we all understand._" Ron flinched a little, and Harry clenched his fists in front of him. He didn't want to hurt his best friend, and just because his words were hot enough to intimidate Ron didn't mean they would intimidate Snape.

"Are you going to do it?"

Harry jerked his head up. "Why should I? He—he can pursue his own revenge, and he has nothing to do with the search I'm conducting." He didn't know if Snape and Malfoy had even realized there had to be a traitor in the Aurors. He didn't know how much they had known about the safehouse wards. When they were there, he had known where they were at all times, so he could protect them, but he had spent most of his time circling the perimeter of the house, checking for threats, and preparing traps that—

That hadn't slowed the Lestranges down at all.

Harry snarled, softly. That was another weapon Snape had used against him. He hadn't actually used the word "guilt" in his letter, but he had hinted around it, about what Harry must be feeling because he hadn't kept Snape and Malfoy safe from the Lestranges the way he had promised to.

"Harry?"

Ron was there. How could he have forgotten Ron was there? Or that he was holding his wand hard enough to break it? Harry released his grip slowly, a little surprised that he _didn't _feel splinters prickling at his skin. He nodded once and leaned back. He couldn't frighten Snape away, and he couldn't pretend his own guilt didn't exist. So he would do something else instead.

"I'll go and meet him," he said. "But I'll choose the place. And it'll be somewhere that I can easily escape."

Ron looked helplessly at him. Harry wondered why until he said, "I wish—do you want me to go with you, Harry? In case Snape—tries something?"

Even then, Harry didn't understand completely, and spent a moment staring blankly at Ron until reality dawned. Ron flinched and nearly put his hands over his ears as Harry laughed rackingly. Harry stopped when he sounded like a victim_on _the actual rack.

"I think he might try to guilt me into cooperating with him, or talk about the bond, or threaten to blackmail me," Harry said. "I'm two hundred percent positive that he won't try to touch me, or rape me again. There's no way that he ever would have without the bond."

"But you can't just forget what he did." Ron turned around and paced to the end of the room, his hands shaking in turn. "How can you stand to be in the same room with him?"

"Because I have to," Harry responded. Oddly, he was calm now that he thought about it. It was like facing the bond, he thought, or preparing to find the traitor in the Aurors. He would drive through and endure the challenges that lay before him, in order to reach the good life he had wanted to survive for, the life he had promised himself.

He had hoped to reach it sooner than this, but, well, he had been wrong, that was all. If he had to, like he had to kill Voldemort and bargain with the bond to survive and admit to his friends that he was—had been—a virgin, then he would do it.

"_Can _I do anything?" Ron trailed off and looked around Harry's house as though he didn't know what he was doing there.

Harry smiled at him and shook his head. "Thank you for coming with me. But this is the kind of thing I have to decide on my own."

"Do you know where you're going to meet him yet?" Ron leaned forwards until he seemed in danger of tripping over his own boots.

Harry stared off into space for a moment, buildings that he barely remembered and images that he had barely formed storming and flitting around his head. Then he smiled and glanced at Ron. "Yes. There's a plan that I formed a while back to arrest one of the former Death Eaters. It didn't work out." He rose to his feet. "But it should work out fine to _meet _one of them."

* * *

"I'm leaving to meet Potter."

"Have fun." Draco kept his voice to a monotone and his eyes on the Dark Arts text in front of him, although Severus stood in the doorway of his study and it would have been a simple thing to glance up at him.

Silence, but that didn't mean Severus couldn't steam like a dragon. Draco resisted the urge to plug his ears with his fingers, and kept reading about the Decapitating Curse instead.

"You might wish me good luck." Yes, Severus's words had that undertone of smoke that was so familiar to Draco from so many situations during the war.

Draco did look up at him this time, because of the words—but probably not in the way Severus wanted. That sense of bitterness in his head had increased. It felt like it was leaking down his nasal cavities and would drip out and cover his book with thick, greasy brown drops any second. "Good luck with _what_?"

Severus shifted his cloak, which he hadn't put on yet. It hung over one shoulder and one arm, and he seemed to think that he would present a more casual picture that way. "Good luck with getting Potter to see sense."

"I want the same thing he wants," Draco said.

Severus blinked at him. "The ability to write letters that will convince me to leave you alone?"

"To be _left _alone," Draco countered, feeling a furious blush working its way up over his cheeks. He turned his head back to the book, his hands curling up in front of him until he thought his nails would pierce his skin. "I don't expect you to understand that—"

"No," Severus interrupted. "In this case, your sense of guilt is interfering with your common sense. We must address the bond."

Draco closed his eyes. "We spent all yesterday trying to do that." They'd searched and searched through the Malfoy library for material on the bond, but even though Severus had said identifying a trifold bond with different emotional sensations for each member should be easy, they had found nothing.

"What would you have us do?" Severus's voice settled on him like small raindrops.

Draco turned to face him, and fought the impulse to extend a hand. Severus would only slap it away, and rightly so. "Leave it alone for _right now. _Give Potter some time to recover. Give us all time to recover, so that it doesn't feel like my tea is full of guilt."

Severus's nostrils flared. "We will never get over what is done to us if we sit back and wait for it to go away." He turned before Draco could say that wasn't what he meant at all, and added over his shoulder, "If you will not wish me good luck aloud, you might think of me in an hour's time, when I will meet Potter."

And he was gone.

Left alone, Draco let his head drop into his hands. He couldn't go on reading; the words swam before his eyes.

This…hurt.

And he knew no way to stop the pain.

* * *

Severus let his eyes sweep the restaurant that Potter had invited him to. It was one of the recent "daring" places that had opened up in Moderate Alley, supposed to be the poor man's version of Knockturn. The apothecaries flirted with ingredients this side of illegal, the bookshop sold purported Dark Arts texts, and there were cafes like this one, with staged duels and counterfeit Aurors coming in to arrest the participants.

Severus wondered for a moment why Potter had chosen this particular place, called the Lenten, probably because the owner was Muggleborn.

When he saw the setup, he understood.

The Lenten was more interested in cultivating an atmosphere than in attracting a large clientele. The tables were small, round, and scattered in interesting combinations, sometimes one and sometimes two. The space between them was breathtaking and led the eye naturally to the enchanted windows, the largest that Severus had seen outside the Ministry, and made of a material that was glass-like in consistency if not real glass. They showed open forest clearings and wide plains stretching away to the sun and the ocean. The café itself was round.

There were no corners here that anyone could pin Potter in, and no tables that would catch him if he tried to race away. There were no tables where you could even sit, really, without seeing most of the people around you.

And Potter had chosen one in the center. He raised his head when Severus looked at him.

The way he moved struck Severus like a blow. He knew what he had done, of course. Woke with the memories hammering in his blood and his ears, and had the steel and the guilt in the back of his mind to bring the knowledge home.

It was another thing, seeing the way that Potter's eyes looked as they had not after the Battle of Hogwarts. He looked at Severus as he had not at the Dark Lord.

Severus nodded once and walked towards the table. Potter did not retreat. He did turn to the side so that Severus could see his hand rested on his wand.

Where he intended to keep it, Severus assumed.

There was a faint, sour taste in his mouth. He ignored it. He could not sense the bitterness that Draco told him came through from his side of the bond, and it would stay that way. He took one of the rough wooden chairs, painted blue at this table, across from Potter and hung his cloak on the back of it, making sure to exaggerate his movements so that Potter would see he had no intention of reaching for him.

Potter watched him.

He reminded Severus now of an eagle waiting to swoop down on prey, as long as Severus did not look him in the eye. The eagle would be wary of any human who approached it, but it had its own beak and sharp claws, and it could attack.

Severus considered the mountain of steel in the back of his mind, for the first time in terms other than the length of the shadow it cast over his thoughts. Did it waver? Did it crack?

No. If anything, it was taller and colder than it had been. It, and Potter's assurance that he could strike if Severus tried something, were the only reasons he was still here, Severus thought. Perhaps the only reasons he had come at all.

"Hermione hasn't found anything about the bond yet," Potter said. "Have you?"

"You assume I have been looking," Severus said, the words springing to his tongue.

Potter's eyes flashed once, and he made a sharp gesture with one hand. Severus nearly drew his wand before the mountain in his mind glittered, too, and he knew it for what it was. Not an attack, but a motion of contempt.

"Of course you would have been looking," Potter said, lowering his voice. "Have you found anything?"

Severus had forgotten how hard it would be to settle himself and attend to what was in front of him instead of his own need to prove himself to Potter. But if the war had ended, and he owed Potter nothing, then he didn't need to do the proving. He did have some choice things to say to Potter, but they would wait until the essentials had been discussed.

"No," he said. "Draco feels me in his mind as bitterness. I feel him as guilt. We both feel you as a mountain of steel." He drew back as two cups of tea floated over to the table, borne on currents of magic from a young woman in a back room. Potter must have ordered it before Severus came. Severus sipped the hot liquid, and grimaced. It was too sweet. "What do you feel us as? That might give us a clue to the nature of the bond."

"I _know _things," Potter said. "I don't feel anything. What you would likely think and your motivations at the moment appear in my head, without intervention." He couldn't have sounded much more disgusted if he had said that he felt Draco and Severus as rotting flobberworms. "That doesn't provide any kind of clue that Hermione can find."

Noting that Potter was not drinking his tea, either, justified Severus in lowering his cup back to his saucer. "That is impossible."

"For me not to feel you as something?" Potter gave him a narrow smile that had so much challenge in it, Severus was forced to remind himself that they should not duel. "That is what happens. I don't think this bond has much precedent in any case."

"If Granger thought that, she wouldn't have started researching it," Severus snapped back.

"She can think one thing, and I can think another." Potter seemed to sit more solidly in his chair, a stone that carved new holes in the air, although Severus didn't know how that had happened. "I'm not tied to her."

"You always needed someone to lead you to the obvious conclusions." Severus leaned forwards and lowered his voice. Yes, the war was past, but there were still some things one did not mention in a loud voice in public. "Most people would have decided they were one of _his _Horcruxes early on, the moment they learned about them."

Potter gave him a smile that could only be called pleasant compared to some of the scowls that he had received from Potter in the past. "Even if I had decided that, and asked Dumbledore, would he have told me the truth?"

Severus choked a little. He had once suggested to Albus that Potter be brought into the plan. If he went off adventuring and got himself killed, there was no guarantee that anyone else would know to destroy all of the Dark Lord's other Horcruxes. For that matter, if he didn't fall dead at the Dark Lord's hands, the Horcrux in _him_ might not be destroyed properly, either. Albus had only shaken his head and refused. Potter was too dear to him for Albus to let the boy know the truth a moment before he had to.

_No matter how close that might have come to dooming the world, _Severus thought. Sometimes he marveled at how willing Albus had been to sacrifice people he claimed to care for to the greater good, and other times he thought it was much the other way about.

"Yes, I didn't think so," Potter said. His voice had gone as soft as starlight. "Hermione didn't lead me to this one. She thinks that she'll still find mention of the bond somewhere among all the Dark Arts books she has access to."

"Dark Arts books?" Severus blinked. He had never considered Granger as saintly as some of the other professors at Hogwarts, so it didn't surprise him that she would touch books like those, but the access was a different matter. "How did she get those?"

"The Blacks have a good library," said Potter, leaning back in his chair. Everything about him was edged, even the bones of his wrists and elbows that Severus would have simply called thin in other people. Maybe it was the bond that made Severus think about him like that, though, and the sharp peak of the steel mountain in the back of his head. "So does the Ministry. In the meantime, I think the bond is something different." He watched Severus with narrowed eyes, apparently waiting for him to argue or agree.

Severus was inclined to do neither, but to switch the subject. This was not at all the way he had envisioned the meeting with Potter going. He had thought he had brought Potter to concede something, since he had come to the meeting at all, instead of holding back and only attending when the bond forced them to. But Potter had an armor that shed all concessions, that made them slide off like water. Severus did not like it.

"We need to make provisions for what we will do if the bond changes," he said.

"Meet." Potter picked up his awful tea and sipped it again, as if he knew that was the thing he could do that would most irritate Severus. "I told you that already. I am willing to meet if the bond demands it, or the sacrifice starts falling on someone else. But that will depend in part on understanding it. Is there anything else you've found?"

Severus had found the direction he wished this conversation to take, in Potter's mention of a sacrifice. "You are being an arrogant child," he hissed.

Potter's face lost a certain subtle animation that Severus hadn't been aware it had—something that separated it from wood. "Arrogant, of course," he said. "There are many ways that you could call me that. Even Hermione said it once, because I was trying to take the whole burden of the bond on myself."

Severus nodded, and started to draw breath again, then stopped it as Potter leaned forwards. Severus did not like the sight of that unmoving face coming towards him. He had to fight to stay still as it finally stopped, looming and hovering over the middle of the table.

"But a child?" Potter shook his head. "I had perhaps one claim to that, one thing that made me immature. And it's gone. You and Malfoy took it. Call me arrogant all you want, Snape, but get your terms right."

And he leaned back and began sipping tea again, staring at Severus.

Severus could feel a boiling in the center of his chest. He wondered if Draco's emotions were now leaking out and affecting him. He wondered if someone had slipped a Heart Attack Poison into the tea. But he could not believe that Potter would have a greater chance of immunity to such a draught than would a Potions master.

No. He knew what it was, what it meant. He did not want to admit it, but he knew. He leaned back, clutching his teacup, and refused to look away from Potter.

"Now," Potter said. "You say the bond is impossible. I think it's unprecedented. Those might come close to meaning the same thing, in this case. What we need to do is monitor it day-to-day. Keep track of the changes and what you feel from them, as you would in a journal on an experimental potion."

"How do you know that?" Severus demanded, before he could let the boiling feeling in his chest stop him. That feeling would have told him that he had already asked too much of Potter. Severus would not let it in.

"That you keep a journal?" Potter looked him in the eye, cool as a lizard. "I don't. If you keep track of the changes you make in an experimental potion some other way, use that way instead to track the bond. You're more used to it, and more likely to notice the changes then."

"That Potions masters keep journals."

The mountain curved as if it would fall on him, although Potter did nothing but sit there. Severus felt as though the sheer scorn in his eyes was digging a hole in the middle of his chest, but he would do nothing save sit there, either, at least until Potter moved further.

"Because I'm not as useless as you think I am," Potter said finally. "I don't despise Potions and everyone who practices it because of _you_. If you think you're that important to me, you're mistaken."

Severus said nothing. If someone had _phrased _it that way to him, of course he would have laughed and said they were ridiculous. He had never wanted to be an annoyance and an enemy to the boy. Things would have been easier if Albus had either raised Potter in the wizarding world and trained him the way he should have someone who was going to take such an important part in the war, or kept him apart from everyone, training him from the moment he could walk. Either way, Severus would not have needed to hint and work around the enormous walls the boy was carrying.

"I can tell a little of what you're thinking." Potter's face was austere in a way Severus had never thought it could be. That kind of look belonged on Draco's face, or maybe his mother's, the face of someone pure-blooded and high and far away. "Yes, Dumbledore should have done things differently. He didn't, and this is where we are." He took another sip of his tea and stood up. "This was useless, I see. You want to bring up the ancient past. I would have expected the recent kind if you were truly the master of vindictive insults the way I always thought you were."

He gave a little bow to Severus. "Don't call on me to meet you again unless you have _news _to impart."

He left, striding through the café and out the door as if he had the ability to walk through any obstacle in the way. Severus stared after him.

There was no way to be sure, of course, but he thought the mountain of steel had grown steeper.

* * *

Harry Apparated back into his bedroom and sat down on the bed, staring at the wall.

He could still feel Snape's confusion, and the way that Malfoy was huddling into himself at whatever lair they'd chosen to go to.

Harry would still have tried to kill them if they touched him, but it was strange. He hadn't been pretending in those last few moments with Snape. He really _did _despise them. Snape was less impressive than Harry had learned to account him. He was a really bloody impressive spy, Harry had decided after the war, to have pretended loyalty to Voldemort for so long, enough for Voldemort to put him in charge of Hogwarts, and to fool Harry and everyone else who needed to be fooled during the years Harry had been a student. And Harry had thought Malfoy had a core of inner strength to survive being Voldemort's torturer without going insane.

Now, though, both impressions had crumbled like clay in rain. Snape was stuck in that past he had helped to weave. He would never see Harry as anything but a boy, the child of the man he had despised, a rule-breaker, a Gryffindor. He couldn't move on, which made him useless when it came to dealing with this bond.

And Malfoy was going to snivel and huddle. Maybe that was how he had survived during the war, too. Death Eaters liked sniveling more than Harry did.

Harry shook his head and lay down on the bed, hands folded behind his head. _I did try, Hermione. I can't help it if my bondmates are useless pieces of shit._


	7. Not Useless

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Not Useless_

"Are you giving up, then?"

Hermione's voice was a little shrill. Harry ignored her as he dragged the books off the shelves in the Black library—books that he'd ignored before, because both he and Hermione had assumed they would hold no useful information. But that was a hard judgment to make if the bond was unprecedented, Harry thought. There were a lot of things that might be useful which he hadn't thought of before.

"No," he said, and laid the books out on the table that Hermione had been using. It was long enough to accommodate both of them. "I have an idea about the bond, and I'm going to see if I can find it."

Hermione leaned over his shoulder. Harry tensed a little, but permitted it. It wasn't _Hermione's _fault that he didn't like anyone behind him right now.

"But…those are books about magical creatures," Hermione said, her voice blank. "How can the bond have anything to do with those?"

Harry resisted the temptation to say that the bond sure as hell hadn't been in anything they had found so far, either, and silently flipped through the pages until he reached the illustration that he remembered, from the summer he'd spent mostly in Grimmauld Place reading anything he could get his hands on. Hermione studied it, her eyes narrowed. A circle, with three triangles inside it. Each triangle sprouted lines that connected them together, but the lines became more slender and faded out near the top of the circle.

"That has something to do with Veela," Hermione said. "I know I've seen it before. I can't remember where."

Harry grunted and nodded. "Sometimes a Veela gets bonded to people they don't want, don't like, can't live with. It's not always instinctual the way that people think it is." He laid the book down on the table and turned a few more pages until he found what he wanted. "In those cases, the bonding can be reversed, by enacting a certain kind of breaking ritual that pulls a third person into the orbit and confuses the bond. The bond is stretched back and forth until it snaps, basically. It can't accommodate a third person—"

"Like the one that holds you," Hermione said, and then sat down beside him with a thump. "But is it really the same thing? I mean, this is already a bond with three people in it, not one with just two."

Harry smiled at her, and saw her flinch. He didn't know why. He had been honest when he said that he thought this bond was possible to get rid of this way.

He didn't _care _what kind it was. That had been his sudden revelation when he was talking with Snape in Lenten. And he didn't think they had to know what kind it was. They just had to _get rid of it._

"I think we might be able to modify the bond-breaking ritual," he said, his hand and eyes tracing over the pages. "It would take a while to make it fit three people instead of two. And Veela bonds don't usually have the mental components that mine does, so that would take some adjustment, too. This is an unnatural bond, though. Getting rid of it would probably be something my mind and magic could help me with. It's a disease, a cancer."

"You keep talking about your mind and magic," Hermione began.

Harry stared at her. The last thing he had expected was an objection _now_. He had made more progress in three minutes than they had so far in five days. "What? What do you mean? Do you know something else that could get me free from the bond?"

"You have bondmates," Hermione said, and squirmed a little under his gaze. "You need to contact them and let them know that you're considering something like this. It could put them in danger if you don't."

Harry put the book down. He did that carefully, and lined up the edge of the book with the edge of the table. Then he turned around and pinned Hermione with his gaze. She flinched hard enough to knock one of the other tomes that she'd been reading off the far edge of the table.

"I met Snape in a café yesterday," Harry began. "He brought up the past and accused me of being arrogant and childish. He sees everything as my fault." He could feel the acid building up in his throat as he spoke, until he thought he could have spat and burned holes in Hermione's notes. "Malfoy hasn't bothered writing to me or anything, so I don't know what he thinks and feels."

"I thought…the bond…"

Harry snorted. "Yes, I can feel that he's drowning in guilt and hiding in his house. As well as what he wants with the bond or whether he's close to finding a solution, I have no idea." He shook his head and closed his eyes, but that was no use; that just brought the image of Snape to mind.

Snape and Malfoy were useless? _Harry _was useless, to think that anything would ever change. Snape would see him as his father's son no matter what happened. Malfoy would run and hide from his problems. Maybe he hadn't during the war because he hadn't had a choice. But now he did, and he would go the rest of his life ducking around the corner to avoid Harry if he had to.

"I'm not going to get any help from them," he said, opening his eyes. "They've decided to blame me for everything. Snape was more interested in the fact that I thought he kept a journal when he made experimental potions than anything else. Apparently I'm not allowed to grow, or change, or acquire knowledge of Potions." He glared Hermione into silence when she tried to say something. "He wouldn't tell me anything about the research he'd done, that's how bad it was."

Hermione just shook her head. "But it affects him as much as you," she said.

Harry had his doubts about that, since he was the one who had made the sacrifice and the only one who had recognized the bond for what it could do before it began doing it, but he snorted. "Right," he said. "But he _doesn't care, _Hermione. He can't work with me. And maybe that's his pride and maybe it's his stupid bloody arrogance that decided a bully's son is the same as the bully, I don't know. But the fact is, he won't work with me no matter what happens. And Malfoy's going to hide in the Manor until he dies and rots. If the bond attacks me, they'll probably feel it, and maybe then they'll stop chewing the cud of their idiocies and masturbating over their—"

"_Harry_."

Hermione's face was really shocked. Harry hissed and wrenched his temper back on topic. "Anyway. I'm not discussing this with them. I've done my share of reaching out and meeting and _sacrificing _for them. They want something? They can actually tell me what it is and what they're doing, not whinge about what persecuted victims they are." He turned back to the threefold design. "Care to help me work on this?"

Hermione nodded and picked up her quill, although she still studied him with shadowed eyes. Harry ignored that, and plunged into the preparations and modifications they would have to make to the bond-breaking ritual. As he understood it, the third person who helped stretch the bond acted like the Binder in an Unbreakable Vow, there to witness and help cast the spell, but not stand between the partners. Since that wasn't the way he and Snape and Malfoy were tied together, they would have to choose one of them and essentially _make _them into the person whose role was to observe.

That would be him, of course. Even if Snape and Malfoy were here, Harry thought, they'd probably refuse, Malfoy because it was dangerous and Snape because it revolted his precious image of himself to be useful to a Gryffindor.

His hand tightened on the quill. He wanted to snap it. He wanted to fling it aside and storm out the door, and go after Snape and Malfoy and curse and curse and _curse _them until it made a difference to the—

Harry paused, and slowly pulled himself back into place. Yes, sometimes he had thoughts like that. It didn't mean that he had to _act _on them.

He lost himself in the recreation of the bond-breaking and the discussion with Hermione about the ways that he could position himself, and then the argument with Hermione about whether they needed his bondmates in the room to do this. That went on until the moment when Harry's chest tightened as if his ribs were growing smaller from the inside. He gasped, doubling up, and the quill did snap this time.

"Harry!" Hermione was kneeling beside him, her eyes frantic.

Harry jerked his head up, and gasped, and forced himself to accept what was happening. It wasn't a heart attack. He'd never had one, but he'd heard the pain described and he thought he would have known if he was having one. He could feel a steady _tug _in the middle of him instead. As though his lungs and his heart and his liver were all rising and pointing one direction.

The direction that Snape and Malfoy were in right now, he had no doubt. He couldn't get a sense of location from the thoughts and feelings that oozed down the bond, but he knew what this was.

The bond acting up. He smiled without humor, wondering if this would make it easier to identify.

And then he placed that thought aside and set it on fire. It didn't matter. They were going to break the bond, and it didn't matter what kind it was, if they did that. Meanwhile, Harry was going to breathe through this agonizing pain.

He jerked his head down and did it, focusing on the relief and joy he would feel when he survived this bond, when he could walk away and concentrate fully on the search for the traitor among the Aurors. His chest heaved as if he would vomit. But he didn't, because he _willed _himself not to do it. He had survived a bond that would have made him either the victim of a violent rape or drool his brains out at the ears. He was going to survive this.

Relief came so suddenly that it hurt, itself. Harry crashed to the ground, and winced, a little, one hand rising to rub at his ribs. They were all intact, or felt so, but when he cast a Diagnostic Charm he'd had good reason to learn a minute later, he saw all the tiny fractures in them. Harry rolled his eyes and set about healing those.

"You have to tell them, Harry."

He turned to Hermione. "If—they—felt something like that, I'm sure they'll tell me," he snapped, and searched his mind. No, there was no revelation there about Snape and Malfoy noticing anything. "And in the meantime, the bond is objecting to me and trying to pull me to them, the way I predicted. As long as it's only affecting me, I don't have to mention anything."

"Harry." There were actual tears glistening in Hermione's eyes now, brighter ones than there had been when Harry told her about the ritual.

"_No_." Harry stood up and shook his head, extending a hand for Hermione. She stood up on her own, staring at him so sadly that Harry sighed and rephrased it. "If it starts causing them pain as well as me, then I'll tell them. Not before." He turned back to the books. They had even more reason to try and modify the bond-breaking ritual now, and soon.

"Why?" Hermione did whisper. "Why isn't your pain a good enough reason?"

"Because I'm not going to give them a chance to throw my pain in my face and mock me for asking for help," Harry said, not looking up.

Hermione gave a noise that might have been a choked whimper, and then began to help him again.

* * *

_Something _had happened.

Draco thought he would have been able to tell that even if Severus hadn't come stomping home yesterday and slammed the door to his lab hard enough to make vials fall over and break. And Draco hadn't heard the sound of a _Reparo _afterwards. That was bad.

He sat, shivering, the book in front of him spread out on one of the library tables and his fingers clenched on either side of it. It was the second thing that had happened, this morning, the second thing that was strange, that scared him more.

A pulling in his chest. Draco had stood up and turned along with it, blinking, shivering. He hadn't been sure what direction he would end up facing, but it was as if he had turned to look at the steel mountain in his mind.

The steel mountain that was shuddering, and had a blunt top where it had had a sharp peak a moment earlier.

Draco had sunk back into his chair and waited for Severus to stomp into the library and demand to know what was going on. Draco had swallowed and had to consider what _that _meant, in turn, when it didn't happen.

It meant that Severus either hadn't felt the twitch in his chest, or had decided that Potter could go hang, because he was so frustrated with him.

Draco closed his eyes. There was a quick spring of tears along the edges, tears that his father and the Death Eaters who had taunted Draco during the war would have despised. Draco dashed his head along the edges of his eyes now, cleaning off the tears, doing what he could to clear them.

He didn't want to die.

He had thought that even when he woke in the copper circle and shouldn't have had enough coherent thought to understand what was happening to him. Then Potter had explained it to him, and desire took over. But the thought of dying, and what price he would have to pay for survival, had haunted the edges of his actions and tainted both the thought of helping Potter and of sitting here without doing anything.

Now, though, Draco thought the question had been settled for him. The bond wasn't content. It might have affected Potter and Severus more strongly than it had Draco, or not at all, but what _mattered _was that Draco knew he could die and the effects might get stronger with passing time. He had to do something.

Draco stood up and went to the table in the corner where Severus had been working with books on bonds, trying to find the clues that would let him identify the one they now shared with Potter. Draco copied the notes with a few quick flaps of his wand, after Summoning the parchment he would need for it. He wouldn't take the notes, in case Severus noticed them missing, although he hadn't made an attempt to resume the search since his meeting with Potter yesterday.

And then Draco turned around and added his own notes to the bundle, although he doubted they would aid Potter much. He was a much slower reader than Severus, and didn't have as much experience of arcane magical theory. He might have written things down as significant that even Potter could tell were rubbish.

But because they knew so little, Draco didn't dare throw anything away. He _didn't _know what was valuable, and that was the point.

He made the whole bundle up into a compact package, the kind an owl could carry, and then Shrank it for good measure. He took it up to the Owlery, where he hesitated before choosing a new bird, not the one that had delivered their previous letter to Potter. This was an ordinary tawny owl, but a good flyer, as were all the Malfoy birds.

"Take this package to Harry Potter," Draco said quietly, and looped the strings around the owl's leg, tightening them with a simple charm. The owl stared at him as if waiting for a letter, but Draco shook his head. Their first communication had been woefully misunderstood. This time, Draco would just send the notes and let Potter make of them what he would. "No other message. Don't wait for a response."

The owl fluttered back and forth on the perch for a moment, as though giving Draco time to change his mind, and then turned and hurtled silently into the afternoon. Draco watched it until the small, rising shape was out of sight.

Then he walked back to his bedroom and sat down, yawning. He hadn't slept well last night—of course not, with Severus so agitated and the mountain of steel weighing down the back of his mind. But although the top of that mountain was still blunt and Draco knew that wasn't a good thing, he thought he could sleep now.

Perhaps he had done his own part to make it sharp again, he thought drowsily as he curled up under the covers.

* * *

"Are they both still useless now?"

Harry turned over the package of notes that Malfoy had sent him and didn't answer. He wasn't sure what he would say.

They were in the middle of the Black library again, books about Veela bonds spread around them. Ron was sitting next to Hermione, another tome open in his lap. He hadn't said anything since Harry had received the package of notes from Malfoy, but his eyes were expressive.

Harry knew from the bond, the knowledge trickling through whether or not he wanted to let it, that Malfoy had been the one who sent the notes. The uncoiling of tension into something that felt like sleep was too obvious. And Snape had refused to tell him anything about his research at that bloody meeting. It had to be Malfoy who had wanted Harry to know what they had discovered—or hadn't discovered—about the bond joining them together.

Harry shut his eyes. It was more acknowledgment than he had thought he would get. It was almost impossible acknowledgment to live up to.

"Will you tell them about the force that broke your ribs now, please?" Hermione sounded breathless, but Harry didn't have a bond to her and couldn't tell what emotion she was keeping back.

_And I would never wish for a bond like this with them, _Harry thought viciously, opening his eyes and turning to his best friends. His fingers shook with the intensity as he put the package of notes back on the table and nodded to Hermione.

"Because Malfoy sent me these notes," he said. "I'll send the letter to him, and explain what happened. It's up to him whether he wants to show it to Snape or not."

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again. Harry smiled grimly. At least she knew better than to urge him to share the information with Snape, after the way the git had acted.

"All right," Ron said unexpectedly, standing up and dropping the book he held on the table. "In the meantime, we need to see whether there's actually anything useful in these notes." He strode across the room and snatched up the notes Malfoy had sent, beginning to rifle through them and make disgusted little noises under his breath.

Harry took a long, slow breath that didn't make his ribs ache, because he had cast the healing charms well enough. Then he picked up a piece of parchment, and sharpened a quill, and dipped it in ink, and wrote.

_Thank you for the notes, Malfoy. They should prove useful as we begin research on ways to break the bond. That's what I've decided to do, because I can't find what kind of bond this is, exactly, but I know it's similar to Veela bonds that are stretched and broken by inserting a third person into them, and that gives me a reason to look up ways that those breaking rituals have been modified in the past. If you want to look up that kind of information yourself, you could send me more notes, and I could send you what we have so far. _Harry thought that kind of peace offering ought to be enough to satisfy even Hermione.

_In the meantime, I should tell you that I experienced a side-effect of the bond yesterday. It made me feel as if the bond was trying to tug me across the miles to land where you are—probably Malfoy Manor. It fractured some of my ribs. _He had chosen that as the less alarming word than "cracked." _Easily healed, but it does indicate that the bond isn't satisfied with what has happened so far. I don't know if it affected you at all. I think I was right, and the main dissatisfaction of the bond is falling on me because I was the one who made the sacrifice._

Harry paused and wondered what else he needed to add. If the bond wanted to demand extra politeness or something, well, so far it hadn't shown _up_ to actually demand that.

In the end, he wrote, _If you want to write back to me and discuss the bond's side-effects or anything you noticed, then we might be able to tell more about it. And the sooner we know what kind of bond it is and what its limitations and weaknesses are, the sooner we can break it._

He stood up, waited for the ink to dry, sealed the letter in its envelope, and turned around to find an owl. Hermione blocked his way.

"You're writing to tell him what happened?" she insisted, gazing into his face. "_Everything _that happened to you?"

Harry nodded. "Including the fractured ribs, and that we're doing research on Veela bonds to try and break this one."

Hermione gave him a single intense stare, then flung her arms around him and hugged him. Harry patted her back, glad that he had healed his ribs completely yesterday. Otherwise, it probably would have hurt.

He looked across the room and caught Ron's gaze, sharp and understanding, observant. Ron nodded to him once, in what might be approval, and then turned back to reading Malfoy's notes again.

_I wouldn't want the kind of bond with them that I have with Snape and Malfoy, not at this cost, _Harry thought, as he stood on the roof a few minutes later, watching the owl fly away. _But why couldn't I be tied to them, if I had to be tied to someone? They're the center and ground of my being. Snape and Malfoy are nothing, and always will be._

There was a twinge in his ribs for a second, a flare across the middle of his chest as though someone was fastening a breastplate in place and not giving him time to adjust. Harry bowed his head and folded his arms. _Nothing. They will never matter to me._

The bond was still.


	8. More Than Cracking Ribs

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—More Than Cracking Ribs_

"Did you disturb my notes, Draco?"

Severus felt the guilt in the back of his mind throb as Draco hunched his shoulders over his newspaper. Severus sighed in disgust. He was going to continue with a lecture about how he was the likeliest one to actually find out what the bond was, considering Draco's distraction and Potter's idiocy, and therefore Draco needed to leave his notes alone if he really wanted to be free of the bond.

But before he could begin, Draco lifted his head from the dinner table and said, "Yes. I did." He seemed to concentrate to make sure that the words sounded as two distinct sentences, then immediately turned back to his food, shoveling it into his mouth in a way that had always made Severus wince when he watched it from the High Table at Hogwarts.

Irritated at himself with remembering school—they had connections and friendships more recent than that—Severus shook his head and sat down opposite Draco. It was his usual seat, but it had other advantages at the moment. "Why?"

"I sent copies of them, plus mine, to Potter," Draco replied, smacking his lips a little to get the food out of the way so he could answer.

Severus sat frozen, staring at him. Draco considered him back, seemed to decide he had said enough, and returned to concentrating on the paper in front of him with implacable energy. The guilt in the back of Severus's mind had stopped throbbing.

"Why?" Severus heard the word come out in such a hiss that a stranger might have thought he was the one in this bond who spoke Parseltongue. _And the gift would have been more worthily bestowed in that case, _he thought, his hands curling furiously in front of him. "Why would you do—"

"Because I felt a tremor in my chest," Draco interrupted, staring up at him. "I don't know what it was, but it felt like the bond was pulling me. And I decided that I care more about this bond being ended and discovered and—and whatever else than I care about being the one to do it."

Severus bit off his exasperation. Was that the only impression Draco had drawn from Severus's anger earlier? Perhaps it was, and Severus was sorry for it. He took a deep breath and made himself take a drink of the clear water in his glass and take a bite of the excellent spaghetti in front of him before he ventured further. At least the Malfoy house-elves knew how to treat a guest, if the Malfoys did not.

"Perhaps you do not understand, then," he said. "Potter will _actively work against us_. There is no reason to send him notes that he cannot make sense of."

"Perhaps he'll actively work against us if we don't treat him right," Draco snapped, suddenly so bristling that Severus again could only stare. "If we help him in turn, and at least _pretend _that we respect him, who's to say?"

Severus moistened his lips with his glass once more, before he shook his head. "This is fancy, Draco," he said, not accusingly, because he did not want the boy to become too involved in his stirring thoughts of rebellion. He knew what the matter was now. Draco's pride had been stung by being treated like a lesser partner in this—relationship, and that meant Severus had to soothe it again. "Potter can sense our emotions, or at least know certain things, through the bond. That means that he would know if we were to pretend respect."

Draco snorted and folded his arms. "But what about outwardly? And—and you can't tell me that you didn't notice the change in the steel mountain that you feel about him a while ago."

"You speak so eloquently," Severus murmured, and watched in satisfaction as Draco flushed and flinched in the same moment. "Perhaps if you were to tell me what you think is the matter in more coherent terms, I would be able to tell you if I had noticed something or not."

"It was right after the pull," Draco said. "I noticed the top of Potter's steel mountain was blunted. You didn't?"

The disbelief in his voice made Severus hesitate. Should he be angry that Draco was insulting him, or proud that the boy thought so well of him as not to believe that he wouldn't notice such a change right away?

For the moment, Severus closed his eyes and sought out the image of the mountain in his mind, giving it a critical survey. He nodded slowly. He supposed the mountain _did _look rather different, now that he thought of it. Dimpled, or crumpled. He had not known there was anything that could dent Potter's stubbornness like that, but whatever it was, he approved of it.

"Perhaps we should be glad of it," he said, opening his eyes again. "Perhaps Potter will be more prone to work with us now."

Draco's mouth opened, but an owl settled at the table before he could respond. Giving Severus a dark look—as if _he _were responsible for the small feathers the bird scattered everywhere as it arrived—Draco untied the message from the owl's leg and began to devour it with his eyes, a fork still poised in front of his nose.

"Perhaps you can tell me what it says, since it is obviously from Potter, and I am involved in this bond as well," Severus pointed out, when long moments had passed with no sign of that happening.

Draco twisted his lip at him and swallowed the bite on his fork, then put it down with a clang that seemed to shake far more than the table, although Severus knew, rationally, that it should not have shaken even that. "I'm tempted not to," Draco said. "Because it would serve you right for being such a _bastard _about Potter. But I suspect Potter would want me to, since this also involves you." He gave Severus such a look of loathing that Severus frowned, and held out the letter.

Severus skimmed it. It seemed to be a deal of nonsense, but did contain the information that Potter's ribs had been cracked—ridiculous, a simple injury to heal—and that he was looking up information on magical creature bonds to try and break this one.

Severus slammed the letter down. "It is _nonsensical _of him to try and break the bond when he has no idea what it is!" he snarled.

"I quite agree."

Severus twisted his head around. The guilt in the back of his head had dimmed oddly, as though Draco had turned off lights that had been shining on it, and Draco was kicked back with one leg elevated, a posture Severus had not seen for years. Draco also had his plate propped on his stomach and was eating with every evidence of enjoyment, something he almost never did. He wasn't dribbling, Severus noted, to be fair.

But he did not want to be fair. "If you agree, why do you sound as if you are opposing me?" he asked sharply.

"It's ridiculous of him—_if _he could have any notion that his bondmates wanted to help him." Draco tilted his chair back in towards the table and put the plate on it. He had finished all his food, Severus noted, for the first time since the ritual circle. "But he doesn't. The only one he's had a meeting with is you, and you behaved abominably."

"He is _Potter_," Severus said, taken aback. Did Draco believe that he would have behaved better if he was the one who had gone to meet Potter? With the history between _them_? The notion made Severus want to laugh and heave, both at the same time.

"He's the person whom we raped."

Having the word turned on him made Severus flinch, but only in surprise. He charged in the next moment, to clear Draco's mind of any notion that he might have won the advantage in this round. "Yes, he is. Which means that the ritual is a powerful one, because of the virgin sacrifice, and a dangerous one. Potter would be well-advised not to try breaking it on his own."

"What made him think he had to?" Draco pointed his fork at Severus. "We did."

"I am glad to hear you assign yourself some role in the play," Severus sneered, too shaken to be as graceful with the words as he wanted to be. "Did you think that he would think kindly of you?"

"Right now, he thinks more kindly of me than of _you_. He even invites me to correspond with him." Draco picked up the letter and smiled at Severus. Severus wanted to snarl, but he understood too well. Draco was most alive with opposition, with someone who didn't want to do something, or blamed him. He had shown that with Potter all those years. He had been terrified when he was working to save his parents from the Dark Lord, but active. And now Severus had become the opposing party. That had been what Draco needed to shake him out of his apathy.

"You keep saying that I need to face up to the reality of what happened," Draco told him, leaning close enough that Severus could feel his breath, if not smell it. "I'm doing that. Are _you_?"

And he spun and strode fluidly from the room, with a grace Severus usually thought reserved for himself.

Severus stared blindly at his food. Then he shoved the table back hard enough to make house-elves appear and squeak in dismay, and went into his lab, where there were more things to break.

* * *

Draco Apparated to the coordinates that Potter had given him in his latest letter, and looked around cautiously. It seemed to be a simple grassy field, but Draco had the strong impression it might once have been more than that, for Potter to know the place. Everything in his life had to be connected with the danger of the Dark Lord somehow, didn't it?

But for now, the place was plain and lovely. A few birds wandered on the ground, and Draco stirred up leaves as he walked under the mostly-dead trees. He stood under the tallest one, as Potter had told him to, and waited.

"Malfoy."

Draco started and spun around. Potter was walking towards him. He stopped a precise fifteen feet away from Draco and stood there, regarding him. The steel mountain in the back of Draco's mind was as straight-topped and unbending as if it had never been broken.

Draco shook his head a little and started towards Potter. Potter's wand immediately snapped out and pointed at him. "Don't," Potter hissed, as if he hurt.

"What, you want us to shout to each other across this field?" Draco asked in incredulity. Someone could come by and hear them, either wizard or Muggle, both of which would be disastrous for different reasons. He wondered that Potter was willing to risk it.

"That's close enough," said Potter, and his eyes were fixed on Draco with such a complex of emotions that Draco gave up trying to parse them. The steel mountain didn't really help him much in that regard. Everything there was the same shade of hard and cold and metallic.

"Okay," Draco said, reckoning he could understand _some _things without needing them explained, and stood still. Potter didn't lower his wand, but did shift his weight from one leg to the other, which Draco reckoned meant progress.

"So," Potter said. "In your last letter you said it's not a good idea to experiment with ways to break the bond. Why not?"

"Because it's the same thing as trying to treat a serious disease with Pepper-Up," Draco said. He had spent a few hours thinking of that comparison, and was disappointed when Potter did nothing but raise an eyebrow. "I mean it, Potter. We have no idea what kind of bond this is. Yes, maybe it's not that strong and you can make it disappear with a ritual that you dream up five minutes before you fall asleep. But anything that breaks your ribs is serious."

"Cracks them," Potter corrected.

"Right," said Draco, unimpressed in spite of his resolve to try and appear nicer. It seemed to him that Potter used that same steel determination he had used to survive the ritual on _everything, _and Draco wasn't actually sure if that was the best course. "Anyway, Potter, my point is that we don't know what we're messing around with. The best course would be to study it together, and not make any sudden moves."

A dry little noise filled the air, actually making Draco look around for a minute to see who else was moving through the fallen leaves. Then he turned back, and saw with some incredulity that Potter was _laughing._

"You're talking about it like it's an animal," Potter said, waving a hand at Draco when he looked inquiringly at him. Inquiringly, and hard, Draco reckoned. Well, he wasn't about to simply let Potter plunge through this without an explanation. "It's not. It's a goddamn bloody bond, one I don't want, and I'm going to _end _it."

"Now who's talking about it like it's a living thing?" Draco folded his arms. "Whether you want it or not, Potter, Severus and I are in this with you, and that means we get a vote on how to dispose of it—"

He took a step backwards. There was no doing anything else before the lambent fury in Potter's eyes.

"Oh, you get a _vote_, do you?" Potter asked, and he was breathing hard enough that Draco was stunned that the leaves by his feet didn't get up and fly.

"Potter," Draco whispered, shaking his head a little. "What—what—"

"You don't get a bloody vote," Potter said. His voice had plunged into a low snarl that Draco knew he would be hearing in the back of his sleep for a long, long time. "Snape has said that he won't help me. Even if I wanted to listen to you, that rather tortures the whole idea of working together to death, don't you think?"

"I can talk Severus around," Draco promised, while wondering if that was actually true. Severus had spent most of the past several days, during which Potter and Draco had exchanged letters, in his lab. "He's offended at me, too, right now, but that will pass. And then we can figure out the solution together."

"I've been talking to you because you helped me and because Hermione thinks I should." Potter's eyes flashed, and so did the steel mountain in the back of Draco's head, brightly enough to make him dizzy. "Not because of _anything _else. I don't like you. I don't want you around."

"I know," Draco said. "But you can tolerate our presence for long enough to break the bond, surely? What were you planning to do if you didn't have us?"

"Use effigies of you," Potter said coolly. "I'm told that they're most effective with hair and toenail clippings attached, by one who ought to know."

_Granger, _Draco was instinctively sure, but he stared at Potter in appalled silence anyway, until Potter snapped, "_What_?" and Draco had to ignore the temptation to Apparate away.

"That's dangerous Dark magic," Draco whispered. "If something goes wrong during the modified ritual and it harms the effigies, _we _could be harmed because of their connection to us."

Potter didn't answer. He just stood there, eyes wide and dark, and Draco took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

"Would it _really _be so bad, trying to work with Severus?" He heard the wheedling tone in his voice, and winced. He hated sounding that way, especially when he had been so confident and at ease with himself these last few days, but it did often seem to be his fate around Potter. "I mean—we have to be able to trust each other sometime."

"I trusted you once," Potter said. "I trusted you both to get through the ritual, and not make it so bad. And since then, I've put up with more and more than a person ever should from their—"

He stopped. Draco had been prepared to wince from the words that he knew must come next, but Potter just stood there and stared at him, as though Draco was the one who had refused to do what _he _had to do, and not the other way around. Draco shook his head, not understanding, and finally said, "Rapists?"

Potter spat at him, a big wad that made Draco flinch back. By the time he looked up again, Potter had already Apparated.

_Well, that was useless, _Draco thought, at first, as he Apparated back home himself, and glanced at the closed door of Severus's lab as he walked past it. He would wait a while to tell him about the meeting, because Severus would gloat that neither of them had been successful, and Draco didn't really want to listen to him talking about that right now.

But his mind remained on the puzzle, playing with it, connecting it with the thought he had had before, about Potter's steely determination not being the best way to face everything, and by the time he sat down in the library with books in front of him again, he thought he understood.

Potter wanted to bull through everything—the ritual, the sacrifice, the rape, finding a way to break the bond. But that meant he was unable to stop or slow down, or he would have to do some thinking, maybe even make an effort to adjust himself and _feel_.

Draco nodded. Potter hadn't been allowing himself to think of the rape in any terms except his own disgust and hatred of Draco and Severus, because he thought that would make him weak. Or weaken.

Draco hesitated a long time before he did what he had thought of next. But in the end, the worst that would happen was Potter sending back a Howler, and he already hated Draco. There was the faint, faint chance that this might make a difference.

_I'm sorry, _Draco wrote out, and waited a long few minutes to see if more inspiration would occur to him. In the end, it didn't, so he just added, _I wish things could have been different, because we did suffer, but you suffered more, _and went up to the Owlery.

The steel mountain glittered in the back of his head as Draco watched the bird fly out of sight.

* * *

_I' m sorry. I wish things could have been different, because we did suffer, but you suffered more._

The words made Harry feel as though the air in his throat had frozen. He tore the note to tiny strips, and then cast _Reparo _on it so that the pieces of paper would fly together and he could watch as the note settled back on the table. He hugged himself with both arms and paced back and forth in the Black library. Ron and Hermione had gone home hours ago, taking books with them.

They would soothe him if they were here. Or they would say—

Harry let out a choked laugh and collapsed into the chair that he'd sat in for so many hours over the last few days while he and Hermione worked on modifying the bond-breaking ritual. It was _impossible _that she would understand the way that Malfoy's words made Harry feel. She would talk hopefully about an apology and reconciliation and how that meant Harry's _rapists _weren't so terrible, after all.

There. He'd thought the word.

It seemed to crash into him like a hawk with talons of steel, but Harry frankly didn't care. He would face up to the word, and master it, and put it behind him, because it was _ridiculous _that he could be unmanned by a mere two syllables.

Unmanned, the way he had been when they put their hands all over him and he'd had to feel them _inside _him—

Harry gagged. He managed to Summon a basin to the library before he threw up, thank Merlin, because he knew he would never make it to one of Grimmauld Place's bathrooms before he did.

And _that _was ridiculous, too. Harry wasn't weak. He ought to be able to control his throat and tongue, to keep the vomit down, and his legs, to make them walk straight beneath him instead of wobble, if that was what he wanted. He was—he was being defeated by a mere _reflex. _It was daft.

He would not be. He would not. He _would not_.

He felt the determination settle deep into him, and he slammed the determination at the problem, the way he had thrown his will into the bargain with the bond. He was still here. He was still sane. He wouldn't be the child that Snape wanted him to be, or the victim that Malfoy wanted him to be, or the raped virgin that his friends saw, someone too tiny-hearted even to have had sex before this.

Harry flung himself to his feet. He was going to prove what he was, what he _chose _to be, what he had bargained with the bond to be.

He was going to be an Auror.

And that meant he had a job that was more important right now than modifying any bloody bonding ritual, or spending time with his bondmates, or whatever Hermione would have thought he should do if she saw him right now. He had a traitor in the Aurors to find.

Harry turned, and ignored the wrench in the middle of his chest. It wasn't that big, it wasn't painful, and it was soon over. It was probably the bond reacting to his decision. That didn't matter. He wouldn't allow it to matter.

There was no choice but to go on. Otherwise, he might as well curl up and let his brains leak out his ears under the pressure of his terror, the way that the Lestranges had wanted to happen.

He took one step—

And a silent explosion shook him, so hard that his first thought was that someone had Apparated through the wards and into his house the way that Rabastan and Rodolphus had attacked the safehouse. He looked around, wildly.

The explosion came from inside him, as Harry discovered a moment later when a distinct shredding sensation tore down the middle of his chest. He looked down, and clothes and skin had been ripped open, as though someone had taken a knife and simply parted both of them at once.

The pain came a moment after that.

Harry fell to the floor and curled up around it, his wand clutched in his hand. He forced the words of spells that would replenish his blood and keep him from bleeding to death between his clenched teeth. He could not yet manage the spell that would close the wound permanently, or the one that would keep him from staining the carpet, but he kept his mind furiously on the words that he _could _remember, and the will to force them out.

He had fought the bond before and won. He would win this time.

He descended into a maelstrom of pain, and then the same ripping started in the middle of his back and he descended into blackness.


End file.
